Ah, the mixtape. Staple of the 80’s (and 90’s, I suppose as you got into mixCDs, perhaps), where has it gone in the latter half of the 2000’s? Its a question that’s better answered by music-ophiles (i.e. not me), but in this burgeoning bubblicious socially driven landscape, you can bet there’s a few entrepreneurs who are betting VC’s are also interested.
Enter Mixaloo, which is a 2.0-ish offering that aims to bring together Mixtapes, the power of social networking, and a little entrepreneurship throwin in for a good mix.
Get your free invite code from TechCrunch over here (spoiler alert: the password is “techcrunch”), to try it yourself; what you may find is that these gents get a round of a applause for trying.
They’ve licensed their tracks from a whole bunch of major players, including “Warner, Universal, EMI, and Sony.” This is good, because the selection is wide and varied.
On the other hand, the “bad” is that they’re all DRM’d up, and more to the point, it costs cash to listen to each song. Its a fair price, mind you, at $0.99 a pop, but the issue really isn’t one of fairness as it applies to the cost per song.
[as a sidepoint, you can promote each album and get a 50% cut of the profits, which works out to be something like $0.10 per track, or around a buck per mixtape; yes, that means you’ve got to move a whole lot of mixtapes to make some coin]
Rather — and someone more musically inclined can step in and correct me if I’m wrong — it seems to me the whole point of *making* mixtapes is to actually share them.
You know, so people can listen to them.
Not try and sell them.
Which is, I suspect, how your “friends” will view things if you try and “Share” your mixtapes, because the only way to listen to a full track is to buy the whole mixtape.
Meh.
I suspect that the folks who will be the real movers and shakers who use Mixaloo (and move lots of Mixtapes Mixaloo’s?) will probably be the same ones who are power “affiliates” for other commercial affiliate programs, such as the same friendly folks who create landing pages — have the know how to “pre-sell” — for ringtones, dating sites, and so on.
