It’s been a rough time of late for Internet Radio, and music sites in general. Pandora’s expecting to shut down. Karaoke videos have been pulled. Muxtape was shut down.
Let’s put it this way: the RIAA and SoundExchange are not the most popular organizations right now. Someone has decided to try and stick it to them however. Their strategy? Release an open source version of what is essentially the concept behind Muxtape.
This open source program is called Opentape, and while it doesn’t have the ability to browse “mix tapes” of others (a popular feature of Muxtape), it does allow you to post your own.
Common theory indicates that whoever is behind Opentape (nobody seems to know) is not so much expecting to beat the system per se, but simply make it harder for the RIAA and SoundExchange to patrol. By making the program open source, they’re throwing the door wide open for more similar programs to appear.
If this is in fact how it plays out, it will likely turn into another P2P-style battle for the recording industry. Although this might be an easier battle for it to win, given that users are unlikely to be as persistent when it comes to this kind of program. Like Josh Catone at Sitepoint asks, “How many people will be willing to risk the RIAA’s wrath to publish a mixtape on their server?”
Muxtape’s founders as well as the rest of the Internet radio industry are probably getting a kick out of the whole thing either way.
