… playing with music websites.

There’s two that I’m liking a lot.

First up, there’s muxtape.com. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that it’s an online mixtape. My first outing is just here.

Sign up for an account, upload 12 tracks, jiggle them around until they’re in a nice-sounding order and that’s it. Simple. Of course, says the disclaimer, you must own the copyright to anything you upload. Yup.

It’s amazing how commonplace uploading music has become. Thing is, when music becomes entirely promotional, which it surely will do at some point in the not to distant future, the idea of trying to criminalise your customers will be as laughable as it actually is. And of course, file-sharing is only bad when it suits the labels. Here at MNFB we get emails from bands themselves (keep them coming), PRs and record labels, saying here’s an MP3 feel free to do with it what you will. That’s us, a tiny little mp3 site with a couple of hundred readers. Imagine how swamped properly popular sites must be. It’s a real double standard – please promote our new artists with free music, but don’t you dare do the same with our A-list. It makes no sense. The A-lists could afford to give the music away on every level, whereas the new artists need to be selling it, but give it away for promotional gain. It’s a strange world.

Anyway, site number two that I’m liking a lot is blip.fm. Global music radar they say and who am I to argue. I’m still not entirely sure what it all does, or what it all means, but I like the blips and the props and the playlists. Mine is here.

The idea they want you to have is that you’re a DJ programming your own show – there’s music on the site (perhaps uploaded via the low profile upload tool, or perhaps just appearing by magic), which you can blip (which is a kind of musical Digg) or add to your playlist. Find other people you like and you can give them, as the young people say, props. Big up. Sweet.

The selection of music is impressively dizzying, there’s some obscure stuff knocking around, trust me, which makes a very nice change. Type in who you’re currently listening to and blip.fm will give you a big old list. You then blip (think Digg) the stuff you like, add a message and it joins the ever-scrolling homepage list.

It’s very neat, and the fact I don’t really get what all of it is about only makes it better. There feels like something big at work here, something that could be world-changing for music people. I’m intrigued by the possibilities of what seems to be the real beginning of social music sharing after the false starts of pandora and the very tedious last.fm.

Anyway, enough about me. Go have a look, post some muxtapes, post some blip playlists and post the links here, would love to get hand-crafted mixtapes again like I did in the olden days.