Music has to be one of the most social forms of content — most of us, even if we listen to our favourite music alone, like to talk about it, tell others what we like and why. That’s why things like Last.fm and Pandora are so popular (although I can’t use Pandora because I’m Canadian and they recently blocked us Canucks for licensing reasons).
One of the ways in which people shared music back in the prehistoric pre-Web days was by making custom “mix tapes” for their friends — a theme that runs throughout the great John Cusack movie High Fidelity. So what do they do now? Some people put together lists of mp3s (I got several over the Christmas holidays) and burn CDs for their friends. But both of those approaches are kind of cumbersome.
David Gratton, the former investment banker turned Web entrepreneur behind the Vancouver-based Donat Group and Project Opus, has created a Facebook app that he hopes can serve the same kind of function as a mixed tape — a way of sharing music with friends easily, and allowing them to contribute too.
It’s called MixxMaker, and it launched this week. After adding the application, you upload some files and then share the mix and ask your friends to contribute theirs. For licensing reasons, the files are streaming only, and they can only be shared with your Facebook friends. David has a blog post describing MixxMaker here.
Update:
Just heard about another new social-music app, this one Web-based rather than on Facebook, called Fuzz.com — where you can also share playlists and digital “mixtapes.” I love the fact that when you play a mixtape, there’s an image of an actual cassette, which flips open to show the hand-lettered looking playlist inside the virtual case. Very cool. Thanks for the tip, Jon.