Those of you with better-than-average memories may recall an article I wrote on Muxtape a few months back. In that article, I questioned the legal standing of the site. Sure enough, nearly a month ago the Muxtape service was suspended with this announcement: Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.
If the “problem” ever gets sorted out, I suspect the service will return with significant changes. At any rate, since then I’ve been without a good mixtape site… until this weekend, when a friend turned me on to 8tracks.
Mixtape Legalese
In stark contrast to the creators of just about every other mixtape service on the Internet, the minds behind 8tracks actually seem committed to running an uncontroversially legal service. How are they doing it? By treating the service as an Internet radio service under the licensing terms of the DMCA. This means paying song royalties.
How is this cost-effective? From the 8tracks legalese:
8tracks is taking 2 steps to reduce its royalty liability so can sustain itself as a business. First, it is opting into a Small Webcaster license offered by SoundExchange (at the request of Congress). This license provides for royalty payment on the greater of a percentage-of-revenue or percentage-of-expense basis, subject to a minimum fee, which will allow us to grow our user base - and our potential for advertising - before having to pay the more onerous compulsory rates owed on a per song, per listener basis.
Second, 8tracks is seeking direct licenses with independent record labels and artists who generally see greater promotional value in internet radio - given relatively few alternative channels for exposure - and are thus more willing to consider the percentage-of-revenue terms common to all other forms of radio (traditional, satellite, cable).
Note the phrase “potential for advertising” - there is, as yet, no advertising on the site, which means the service is being supported by investors (thank you, investors!).
Important 8tracks Features
8track has a lot of great features going for it, many of which I haven’t seen on other sites. These are my favorites:
- Searchable song database: This is a big one. 8tracks allows you to search all the tracks that have been uploaded already, saving you the trouble of re-uploading a song you want to use. It also gives you a list of tracks you’ve already uploaded, tracks you’ve identified as your favorites, and tracks uploaded by your favorite users, allowing you to preview them on-page as you’re creating a mix.
- Listen as you browse: One of my favorite things about 8tracks is that the site lets you browse around while listening to a mixtape. The mix will hiccup as you load a new page, but it’s better than the alternative. This feature really helps me feel better about exploring the site.
- Embedded playback: For each mix, 8tracks gives you a code snippet to embed your mix on a page of your own.
- Unlimited mixes: You can make as many mixes as you want on 8tracks, and save them as private or public.
- Social networking functionality: 8tracks users can create a personal profile, follow other users whose mixes they like, identify favorite tracks, and comment on mixes in a public comment thread. This, together with the listen-as-you-browse feature, strongly encourages user interaction.
- Drag-and-drop mix creation: You can add tracks to a mix and rearrange them conveniently. I’ve seen a few bugs in this feature so far, but they aren’t too major.
One feature I’d love to see is an option to crossfade between tracks. Smooth transitions are essential in a good mixtape, and a crossfade function would open up a lot of possibilities.
Get to Work!
All in all, 8tracks is a great service and a fun way to discover new music. So, what are you waiting for? Make a mix, and then post it here. These are two of mine:
Cross-posted to Newsvine.com
© 2008 Evan Mix for Listen In. Some rights reserved.
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.