is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
Very belatedly, I want to offer a requiem for the old Muxtape. In its current incarnation, it’s become a showcase for new bands that shows some real promise, hewing to the artful, minimalist aesthetic that in part made Muxtape famous. But in its original form, as imagined and launched by its creator Justin Oullette last year, it provided an elegantly efficient social space where anyone could upload their own mix of songs — of all the social networks we’ve seen so far, it was for my money the least fussy and the most elegant.
The old Muxtape was a perfect example of going to great — one might say drastic — lengths to minimize distractions, yielding a wonderfully designed experience for the user, and coming as close as anyone has to achieving a truly, thoroughly modernist online environment. Not incidentally, its somewhat brazen flouting of copyright laws allowed scores of would-be deejays to have fun programming their own playlists. It was really, really fun.
Remuxing the Past
I can attest to that because last June I made my own Muxtape and had enjoyed it. Unfortunately, when the record labels ultimately took issue with the service and forced it to cease its all-comers uploading policy, that track list disappeared along with the many, many others that had been posted to the site during its brief heyday.
In that original spirit, I’m posting a new mix using Muxtape’s would-be successor, Opentape — the track listing is below, and you can listen to the playlist itself at Mix.subtraction.com. In form, Opentape closely resembles its progenitor; its spare beauty is a nearly perfect replica of Muxtape’s. But since it resides on each user’s own Web server rather than existing as a centralized service, it lacks Muxtape’s social features, essentially dooming to a much more limited reach. Which also means it isn’t quite as fun. Still, you can listen to the music, which counts for something.
Open Tape seems cool. I’ve also enjoyed exploring 8Tracks.com, which, while it’s no Muxtape in terms of elegance, it does provide similar functionality while adhering to the letter of the law.
The other music site I’ve come to rely on is The Hype Machine(hypem.com), but it’s a completely different beast than Mux/Open Tape.
Ah! I’ve been looking for something like this; thanks for the pointer. That said, it’s nice to see Muxtape back — even in its current incarnation; even if it’s just used to showcase a very small population of bands.
What’s the bandwidth load like with Open Tape? On outof5, we blew through our bandwidth pretty quickly offering a flash player for the mixes; I’d use Open Tape if it didn’t suffer the same trouble.
Andrew: there’s no mechanism inside of Opentape, as far as I can tell, that minimizes the bandwidth load. So, good point; I’d better watch the meter. Thanks!
i think there’s one major advantage that 8tracks has over muxtape or, it appears at least, opentape—embedding your mix in an 8tracks media player. So wherever html and flash can be hosted and displayed, you can drop your music mix. It makes sharing the music a little easier and more convenient for your friends and relatives.
I’m trying Opentape too and I was wordering: how do you split mixes in groups (that /01 in the URL). Did you copy Opentape code directly in that folder?
I hope there’s a better way to do that.
Jon
i will agree about Women! especially with their first being a self titled album. hahah.
Very belatedly, I want to offer a requiem for
Open Tape seems cool. I’ve also enjoyed exploring 8Tracks.com, which, while it’s no Muxtape in terms of elegance, it does provide similar functionality while adhering to the letter of the law.
The other music site I’ve come to rely on is The Hype Machine(hypem.com), but it’s a completely different beast than Mux/Open Tape.
kyle
Ah! I’ve been looking for something like this; thanks for the pointer. That said, it’s nice to see Muxtape back — even in its current incarnation; even if it’s just used to showcase a very small population of bands.
A magazine recently included Suede’s Shipbuilding as one of the worst covers ever.
They were, of course, wrong.
Daniel: I completely agree with you, obviously. I’m partial to Brett Anderson’s vocals, but the song itself is indomitable.
What’s the bandwidth load like with Open Tape? On outof5, we blew through our bandwidth pretty quickly offering a flash player for the mixes; I’d use Open Tape if it didn’t suffer the same trouble.
Check out 8tracks.com, it’s very nice.
Andrew: there’s no mechanism inside of Opentape, as far as I can tell, that minimizes the bandwidth load. So, good point; I’d better watch the meter. Thanks!
Thanks for the link to 8tracks, looks fun. I was going to try out Opentape but I’d rather have something in Java than PHP.
i think there’s one major advantage that 8tracks has over muxtape or, it appears at least, opentape—embedding your mix in an 8tracks media player. So wherever html and flash can be hosted and displayed, you can drop your music mix. It makes sharing the music a little easier and more convenient for your friends and relatives.
I’m trying Opentape too and I was wordering: how do you split mixes in groups (that /01 in the URL). Did you copy Opentape code directly in that folder?
I hope there’s a better way to do that.
i will agree about Women! especially with their first being a self titled album. hahah.