RIAA strikes again — from mixtapes to Muxtape
October 9th, 2008 by Rodney Carmichael in Music newsFirst DJ Drama’s Atlanta-based Gangsta Grillz mixtape dynasty feels the RIAA pinch. Now Muxtape — 2008’s coolest online music-sharing tool — gets squeezed out by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Would somebody please tell this dinosaur of a music industry that every move it makes in the name of self-preservation only brings it one step closer to extinction?
Click here to read how Justin Ouellette created Muxtape and what he has in store for its future now that the powers that be have snuffed it out.
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October 9th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
As much as I am against many of the tactics the RIAA has regarding music sharing, you’re a little off on your report that they “squeezed out” Muxtape.
From Justin at Muxtape: “They demanded that I take down six specific muxtapes they felt were infringing, so I did.”
They did not shut down the website. They requested the removal of 6 out of 1.2 million unique visitors.
Would someone please tell the music fanatics that calling wolf over everything the RIAA does is as bad as a bicyclist running a red light or a pedophile babysitting?
October 10th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Well just call me a red light running bicyclist, Tessa (not so comfortable with the babysitting pedophile, however).
But before you do, I beg you to read further down into Justin’s Muxtape post:
“… I received notice from Amazon Web Services (the platform that hosts Muxtape’s servers and files) that they had received a complaint from the RIAA. Per Amazon’s terms, I had one business day to remove an incredibly long list of songs or face having my servers shut down and data deleted. This came as a big surprise to me, as I’d been thinking that I hadn’t heard from the RIAA in a long time because I had an understanding with the labels. I had a panicked exchange of emails with Amazon, trying to explain that I was in the middle of a licensing deal, that I suspected it was a clerical error, and that I was doing everything I could to get someone to vouch for me on a summer Friday afternoon. My one business day extended over the weekend, and on Monday when I wasn’t able to produce the documentation Amazon wanted (or even get someone from the RIAA on the phone), the servers were shut down and I was locked out of the account. I moved the domain name to a new server with a short message and the very real expectation that I could get it sorted out. I still thought it was all just a big mistake. I was wrong.
“Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over.”