Bullshit.

I don’t know if they will get shut down, but, at some point, they will probably get sued. The legal process is slow and bulky, so I imagine they will be able to enjoy at least 1 year of service without interruption. That is, assuming they last that long.

In any case, Muxtape has already pegged itself a loser. Much of the initial praise is due to it’s simplicity and focused approach; both of which will fly out the window if Muxtape ever expects to bring in any revenue. I doubt the service will be as nice when the interface is overrun with banner ads and purchase links. In any case, even if they do start running ads, the conversion rates will suck and advertisers will be unhappy. Music is consumed through the ears, and as such, users will be able to use Muxtape without paying much attention to the screen.

Muxtape is a simple and nice service (I could literally build it in under a days time), however, it is bound to hurt the owner/s because there is no underlying business model and the main service is illegal. I wonder what will happen in month 3, when the site has run up a bill of $30k to S3 and brought in $0 dollars. If Muxtape wants to survive, it will eventually have to morph into last.fm. Unfortunately for Muxtape, last.fm already exists.

Some great tunes on there already though. One of the greatest things about this kind of sharing is it introduces people to music they would never know about and therefore would never have bought in the first place.

@Adam: I think it probably depends on how popular it ends up getting..Services like that get caught in somewhat of a pickle. On one hand, you’d love to see it grow. On the other hand, if it grows too much you’re just going to end up in trouble.

I think it has a chance to stick around. The Flash player hides the MP3 files from the user. It’s still illegal, but it should be less of a bad thing in the eyes of record labels.

If it were my project, a “buy this song/album” link would be my next feature.