Mixing It Up With Mixaloo

Mix tapes have been part of music culture since the invention of recording tape.

Sometimes a mix tape is just a collection of favorite songs. Other times it’s an array of specific songs with the tunes and the order of appearance signifying a particular feeling, mood or message. Mix tapes are as much a part of the music lover’s world as are CDs, guitar solos and concert ticket onsales.

Although the mix tape concept is very much alive in the digital age, what with MP3s, iTunes and CD burners, one company wants to be your mix provider. Or more exactly, it wants to be your mix tape enabler by providing you with a music library, distribution platform and maybe even a slice of the income pie.

Mixaloo is all about bringing the mix tape into the digital age. Or, as Mixaloo CEO Mark Stutzman told Pollstar, "It’s an activity that a lot of us spent our youth on, putting together mix tapes for all kinds of reasons. But the real motivation is all about sharing who you are through music. And the people who matter to you."

Music definitely matters to Mixaloo co-founders Stutzman and Mark Peabody, the company’s VP of Business Development. Stutzman, who is a drummer, was CEO and founder of interactive services firm Digital Variant and was chief technology officer of Bolt.com, one of the first teen-oriented social Web sites. Partner Peabody was also at Bolt.com where he served as VP of business development. Before Bolt, Peabody was a senior analyst with technology and marketing company the Aberdeen Group.

With Mixaloo, music fans choose songs from the company’s library, which includes content from all four major labels as well as hundreds of indie imprints, assemble a mix and distribute the finished mix via e-mail, blogs or Web site postings where it appears as a collection of 30-second samples.

But creating and distributing the mix is only half the fun. People who receive the mix or see the mix posted somewhere on the Web can then purchase the mix, with songs averaging about 99 cents per.

"We make it extremely simple to promote your mixes to any of the major social networks or your own personal blog or your home page or wherever you want it to be," said Stutzman. "Then we also provide the users the opportunity to earn cash. That means every time someone comes across the mix tape on a page, and says, ‘I love this mix, I want to buy it,’ the user who actually created the mix splits the profit with Mixaloo."

In addition to earning some cash by selling their Mixaloo mixes, users can also earn points that can be exchanged for merchandise through the Mixaloo Web site.

But aside from Mixaloo splitting the profits with its users, the company is also promoting a grass-roots viral strategy for marketing music. After peer-to-peer illicit file-trading, one of the major online copyright problems facing the recording industry is the unauthorized use of tracks on Web sites, music blogs and social networking environments like MySpace.

Although many such sites are actually promoting music, oftentimes the record labels see it as more copyright infringements needing to be shut down. But Mixaloo makes such situations legal.

"Folks are taking full tracks that they absolutely have no rights to and promoting them on their sites," Stutzman said. "They’re getting themselves in the cross hairs of the major labels. Mixaloo is a 100 percent legal alternative to that."

What does one see when encountering a Mixaloo mix?

First there’s the user-selected title and custom artwork. Mix authors can upload their own pictures to associate with the mix. Then there’s the mix itself – 30-second samples of 15 tracks or more. By using the Mixaloo widget, viewers can then purchase the mix.

But more importantly, if a mix grabs someone’s attention, he or she can send that mix to a friend, no matter if it’s the original mix with 30-second samples or a purchased mix with the complete songs. It’s this viral marketing aspect of Mixaloo, where music fans distribute the Mixaloo mix to other music fans, that shows so much promise.

"What’s exciting to us about this is that it really opens up a distribution channel for the labels, and it creates this kind of vast, one-to-one promotional opportunity for the labels to reach the individual with their music," Stutzman said. "It’s really the fans of the music. The ones who are the most passionate about the music they listen to, become the resellers of that music. And there’s no one better to recommend music to their friends."

Many Web ventures might take more than a year from that initial "eureka" moment to the day they hang out their digital shingle. But Mixaloo has navigated the fast track almost from the moment of conception. Conceived just more than a year ago, Mixaloo began beta testing about seven weeks ago and will officially launch in mid November. Fast growth for fast times.

"It’s an entirely new distribution model that really empowers the users to get that music out there and sell it themselves," Stutzman said. "The most passionate users, the most fans of the music they consume, and they’re communicating the best way possible via this social landscape. Not only are the fans who are the most passionate promoting the music, but they’re promoting it in a way where all of the folks who are looking to consume music are at the right place at the right time."

 

Oregon Challenges RIAA Subpoena

The Recording Industry Association of America filing copyright infringement lawsuits against college students isn’t news. After all, the trade organization representing the major labels has filed suit against more than 20,000 people suspected of infringing copyrights via peer-to-peer file sharing since 2003, and many of those suspects have been college students. But when a state’s attorney general files papers on behalf of the university the students attend, that’s news.

That’s what is happening in Oregon, where the RIAA filed a lawsuit accusing 17 University of Oregon students of infringing recording industry copyrights. Unable to identify the students by name, the lawsuit instead named Internet addresses.

For many of these lawsuits, identifying the perps by Internet addresses instead of the actual names is pretty much par for the course whether the RIAA is targeting a school or an Internet service provider. The RIAA files the lawsuit and expects the business or organization on the other end to come up with the names.

But that wasn’t good enough for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, who filed court papers last week in an attempt to keep the school from having to identify the students.

The university says naming the students without any prior investigation by the school would violate the students’ right to privacy. The university claims it can’t be sure who actually committed any infringing activity without interviewing the students and inspecting the computers.

The university also says that although the RIAA has the Internet addresses, that doesn’t mean the students assigned those addresses necessarily infringed on copyrights by downloading unauthorized music. Instead, the university says it could have been a visitor, guest or anyone who might happen to have access to the Internet addresses identified in the lawsuit.

"University [officials] feel like they are being asked to do the investigation on behalf of the company when it’s not really their role," said Oregon Department of Justice spokesperson Stephanie Soden.

According to PC World, of the 17 John Does / Internet addresses targeted in the RIAA’s lawsuit, five of the addresses lead to double-occupancy rooms and the University cannot identify which student actually committed the alleged infringements without conducting its own investigation. Although two addresses lead to single-occupancy rooms, the University can’t determine if the person assigned to that room committed a copyright infringement or if the dirty deed was done by a visitor.

In response to the Oregon Attorney General filing papers in an attempt to stop the lawsuit, the RIAA said the law is on the trade organization’s side.

"This is not the first attempt to quash a subpoena, nor do we expect it to be the last," an RIAA spokesperson said. "In the handful of instances where this has occurred, the courts have overwhelmingly ruled in favor of the record companies."