The popular mix sharing site Muxtape has been taken offline so that administrators can "sort out a problem with the RIAA," according to a note that appears on the site.

"For the past several months, we have communicated concerns to Muxtape on behalf of our members," said an RIAA spokesman via email (6:28pm EST update). "Muxtape has not yet obtained authorization from our member companies to host or stream copies of their sound recordings."

One of our top ten favorite music websites, Muxtape's service keeps the mixtape concept alive by allowing anyone to post a mix of up to 12 songs that can be easily shared with a simple URL. Its interface (screenshot below) consists of artist and song titles presented in large fonts, with "buy" links under each song.

Muxtape fans can derivesome hope from the fact that Muxtape's note predicts the outage will beonly "for a brief period," but for now, mixes created on the site areunavailable and new mixes cannot be made.

In April, Muxtape founder Justin Oullette downplayed the idea that labels might be upset by the service. "Labels big and small have told me that they're excitedabout Muxtape as a model for discovery and ultimately selling music,

and I think that's extremely keen," he told us via email. "Cassette mixtapes were such a greatway to discover new music before the internet, and I think the lessonswe learned from that era can be carried into this one."

However, the labels represented by the RIAA nolonger appear willing to give the site a free pass. When users upload songs toMuxtape, they're technically infringing on the copyright holder'sexclusive right to make a copy of the song. And when Muxtape streamsthe songs to other users, it's liable for streaming royalties.

Michael Robertson's old My.MP3.com service allowed users to stream the music they owned on CD only to themselves, and the RIAA shut that down.

Muxtape, which does not require ownership of a CD in order to upload an MP3, and which allows users to listen to each others' mixes, couldface a harsher reaction. However, it's conceivable that the RIAA has presented Muxtape with a list of stipulations with which they must comply, such as only allowing one song per artist to be uploaded or, in a extreme case, restricting all songs to 30 second samples.

See Also:

Second screenshot courtesy of marklarson