muxfind
I posted about two new web-based mixtape services several months ago, muxtape and mixwit. I’ve played with both a bit and listened to a few mixes since. But neither service has taken me away from my primary web listening experiences; tumblr, hype machine, and last.fm.
Then this morning I saw this twitter post by Jen Robinson:
I love it! Search results for my favorite band on muxfind. http://muxfind.com/search/?…
Jen was linking to muxfind, a new search tool for muxtapes. This turns me on bigtime.
Ever since delicious and flickr, I’ve loved the idea of searching "user generated content". Not because user generated content is universally good. But because it takes time and effort to post something to the web. Be it a link/url in delicious, a photo to flickr, a video to youtube, a twitter update, or a song. Better yet a playlist. And so that effort in and of itself is a bit of a quality filter. I think of hundreds of things a day. But only a few get to my twitter stream.
Speaking of searching a twitter stream, I watched the Chelsea/Manu match on Summize, a real-time twitter search engine. That was a pretty great way to follow the big match while working on three other things at my office.
The idea of searching user generated audio content is not new. We can listen to the Beatles on HypeMachine. The Hype Machine aggregates music blogs and the mp3s that are uploaded to them. So listening to the Beatles on the Hype Machine is one kind of Beatles playlist.
Now we can listen to the Beatles on muxtape. Since you don’t have to be a music blogger to make a muxtape (you just need to be a playlist maker), it may well be the case that muxtape will get a larger base of users uploading audio content. That will create a different kind of Beatles playlist. Better than the Hype Machine? I don’t know. But certainly different. Right now the muxfind search result page is not a playlist the way a muxtape is. I hope they change that.
We are entering into a new world, where the search engine result page is a media experience in its own right. And that’s an exciting thing to think about.
Comments (Archived):
One has to assume that ‘Search’ is such an obvious and easy-to-implement feature for Muxtape that Justin must have *intentionally* left it out of the feature set. Sure, Search is a great tool for us users, but isn’t this just going to attract more industry heat on Muxtape?
semantic search no?
Of course, that adjacent discovery, and seeding it with my current (or apropos your latest ‘mats kick, my college playlist) makes the web a music discovery “wow” akin to what it was for information discovery “wow” a decade ago.
Where’s the ‘mats muxtape?If it exists leave a link please?Fred
muxfind? pffthttp://listen.grooveshark.com/index.php?searchQuery=the%20booksclick on playlists, bam, much easier!plus, you can build your own playlist right from our platform
Huh?
you can search for playlists with songs with grooveshark as well — you type in the song/artist you’re looking for, then click on playlists to pull up all playlists with that artist/song
Andrew -I just checked out the site. It’s really impressive. I know I’ll be using it a lot from now on. How do you plan to deal w/ the whole legality/copyright issue?
Nick, thanks for the kind words — very much appreciated.We’re trying to do things the right way in talking to content owners as well as allowing them to sign up and distribute their content.Also check out http://www.tinysong.com/i2 our new fun app 🙂
I still think imeem is the best playlist service, you can upload, share, and contribute ad-rev to the artist pocket. Muxtape does not do this.
Well I talked quite a bit about imeem in my original post on muxtape and mixwitI am finding services that do less are better for me these daysFred
“I am finding services that do less are better for me these days”AmenP.S. it seems like there are more comments since you installed disqus, any evidence to back that hypothesis up?
I actually like the idea of only being able to see and access Muxtapes that have a particular artist / song in it. It’s a different model of discovery than Hype Machine and Last.fm and that’s part of the appeal.I agree with your last line about search engine result pages as a media experience. I should be able to search for an artist and find all of the different context that people have shared their songs. It would be like the first layer before saying, “I want to hear only Beatles, I want to hear mixed tapes with Beatles, I want to watch Beatles videos, I was to hear what people who listen to the Beatles also listen to…, etc.It’s also exciting to think about the other contextual information (locations, activities, moods, time of year, etc.) that could be matched to music to open the discovery process even more.
Fred I think muxtape is awesome but how are they dealing with the song copyright issues a la napster?
I don’t think they areNeither is hype machineMaybe the labels are realizing that muxtape and hypem are the new radio – ie promotionFred
okay now that is serioulsy cool
Another music search engine that I recently found that you might want to give a whirl is http://www.lazytune.com . It’s a bit hit or miss. Ran a few queries and found that some bands were represented well, while others were non-existent.I agree that the simpler and easier the tool the better. I just want to be able to discover and listen to music without having to jump through too many hoops.
Fred, we’ve had our own search for about a month: http://www.mixwit.com/searc…I’m not sure if search alone will make Mixwit apart of your daily web listening experience, but I think we’ve got some stuff in the works that will.
CoolI’ll go check it out
Good point about the friction in an app being a quality filter. Another thing Muxtape does right is limiting you to 12 songs and 12 friends. Those limitations make you post songs 1) that you love, 2) that you think other people will love, and 3) that you think other people don’t know about yet.(OT: it’s *really* cumbersome to comment when Disqus forgets me)
on muxtape: muxtape forces you to go to their website, that’s so 1.0. it doesn’t come with any embedding features.I want to share with my friends on my blog. (my playlists, or playlists I love, made by somebody else)I thought I could embed it using some IFRAME code in Tumblr, but the dreaded javascript in Muxtape doesn’t work well when embedding the flash ui.on search: eventually, Google will have to open up the search engine so that third parties can plug-in context/content awareness
elbo.ws is the other big music blog aggregator, and I find it a bit more useful than Hype Machine in searching for blog posts about a specific band:http://elbo.ws.com
Fred, while it’s designed for PR and marketing people to track brands and reputations across social media you might want to try Techrighy’s SM2, our social media monitoring and analysis tool. There is a free version. It’s not exactly search in that it takes a little while to bring back results (it’s real time discovery as opposed to indexing) but you can drill pretty deep on a subject.
And… it’s already dead, claiming potential legal issues for linking to whatever. A C&D or just random fear?
yes, Muxfind seems to have been taken down – a shame – I really enjoyed it for the couple days it existed
Yes, it looks like the took down the best feature, searching for music by name.
I like muxfind, but http://www.muxtapestumbler.com has more options…