Muxtape Shuts Down to Deal with RIAA
Muxtape, one of our favorite ways to share playlists, has temporarily shut down due to unspecified pressures from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The company’s blog assures users that the shutdown is not permanent and Muxtape will eventually return.
Muxtape is one of many services that offer streaming music from user-created playlists — you upload the MP3 files, and others can listen to them, but there’s no built-in way for anyone to download the tracks.
While the company has offered few details about what what is behind the shutdown, it’s not hard to imagine that uploading MP3’s rubs the RIAA the wrong way. Many similar sites (like Favtape) use Seeqpod to serve MP3s, allowing them to sidestep concerns about hosting actual song files.
The Muxtape blog did offer a small update late yesterday evening saying, “No artists or labels have complained,” and reiterating that “the site is not closed indefinitely.”
Another possibility is that Muxtape has run afoul of the licensing fees associated with streaming audio — the same problem that’s haunting Pandora. However broadcast fees are generally handled by SoundExchange and not the RIAA.
Whatever the cause, at least for now, there’s no Muxtape for you.
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