Users may not upload songs... they do not have permission to let Muxtape use.
I don’t know. To me it seems that Muxtape is basicly a Tumblr-like platform for scaled down music blogs, and they don’t have to pay royalties, do they? I mean, they may have to impose a few more limitations in the future as well as do a little more policing about the songs that get put up, but as long as they keep things small i don’t see much of a difference between Muxtape and, say, Gorilla vs Bear or Fluxblog. Am i wrong in thinking this?
Well, uh, I think I understand what you’re getting at — it seems unlikely that anyone is going to be paid anything, which is exactly how it is with mp3 blogs — but I’m inclined to think that Muxtape is only really like my site if people were actually going to be writing reviews of every single song they put on their mixes. Otherwise, it’s just more music floating around on the internet, which is not really a story.
I think Muxtape is different exactly because there is no expectation of review or commentary. It is, very innocently, a place to post and share music with whomever you’d like to send the link to. Much like tumblr, it acts as a simplified way to go about something that the internet has long made available. Sure, people could always blog, but they like tumblr because it creates some basic parameters for what should be expected. Likewise, Muxtape only provides song streams, limits the amount you can post, and puts all the songs, sequentially, on one page. It could be beefed up in ways, and it seems to be begging for a social networking aspect, but it works great for what it is.
With the endless possibilities that the internet provides, people are finally realizing that the best applications are the ones that provide them with the proper context and structure to not make them feel lost and insignificant. This is a good thing.