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On Missed Opporunities

May 7th, 2008 by benny

For anyone who has known me for more than, I don’t know 10 minutes, would know that I am really lazy. I very much believe in the converse of the physics law “things in motion tend to stay in motion.” ie. if I’m sitting my ass in a chair, pretty be damn good to get me out of it.

However, recently, I’ve been oddly productive. I don’t mean at work either, but like in real life. What I’m referring to is some of the side projects I’ve been working on (exhibit a and exhibit b). Now, here’s a revelation I’ve come upon: It feels good to do stuff.

How does this relate to missed opportunities?

Muxtape.com has been getting some buzz around the net. It’s a pretty cool concept, upload a few songs, and be able to play the songs as well as link it with your friend. Simple problem, simple solution. Not trying too hard at all. It’s one of those ‘Web 2.0 startups’ that are bound to be bought out by a Google or Yahoo-types.

A few years ago, I had started develop this site called “hearphone”. Simple idea: upload a few songs, be able to play it, share the link with friends. Sound familiar?

I think part of the reason why I’m, you know, doing things is that it sucks that you miss an opportunity like this because you’re lazy. If you have a good idea, why not go with it? It sucks to regret not putting in the extra little bit to keep going.

Updated (05/08/2008 @ 9:37 AM): my thoughts about other “Mixtape” websites here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 8:37 pm and is filed under junk, life, nerd, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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also 6 months ago 1 point
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another good example is when you didn't take a certain someone up on that offer of alices tea cup. l-l-lazyyyyy!

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Social Media Mojo 6 months ago 1 point
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Ahh don't worry, muxtape is late to the game by a long way
mixwit was letting people do this before muxtape was launched....
and seeqpod was letting people make playlists from music found around the web before anyone had heard of mixwit....
but seeqpod was pre-empted by projectplaylist....
except projectplaylist was beaten to the punch by finetune....

and.... in 2004 a company called imeem.com launched, imeem has something like 20million users making 'playlists' from tracks uploaded to the site by themselves or other users. They're by far the biggest site doing this and have managed to negotiate their way into all the record deals and stuff that's needed to make this legal.

So, you can tell yourself that hearphone was a more original idea than muxtape, but by my measure it's the least original of all the sites I've mentioned. But if you had hearphone running before imeem, then you might think of it as a missed opportunity.

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Benny 6 months ago 1 point
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I don't think that it's true that they're the same at all. I think Muxtape, fundamentally, is much better executed.

1. Mixwit - If I can't find out how to look at the track listings within, what, 15-20 seconds, that's terrible design. Yes, it's true to providing a 'mixtape', but if I can't get around to the music I want to listen to, it turns me off from using it. On top of that, I just got a flash exception. Uncool.

2. Seeqpod - this seems more like pandora more than a mixtape site? It looks like a music discovery service than anything else.

3. Project Playlist - probably the only one I'd use if Muxtape wasn't around, but I have two major qualms. There's this "Social" bullshit that I think is useless to this problem (the problem being I want to share music and listen to other peoples music). Why would I want/need 'Buddies' on a playlist site? If you really want to be able to do that, write a facebook app to hook into Muxtape somehow. The second qualm I have with this is that it takes me forever to browse playlists. On Muxtape, I go to Muxtape.com, click twice, and I'm listening to music. How much simpler can it get?

4. imeem - I actually use imeem, and I think it's great that I can search for music and compile my own playlist. But because they have negotiated with the record companies, you can't listen to anything unless you're a member. That deterred me the first time I tried to use it. Muxtape is dead easy to start listening to music.

Further, although it's a tiny bit annoying that you can only make one muxtape, I think it's good because it prevents shitty playlists to be made. On all the aforementioned sites, the gold to shit ratio was extremely, extremely low, whereas I've found muxtapes ratio pretty high. If people are limited to one playlist, they're going to make it good.

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http://bwong.net/

Social Media Mojo 6 months ago 1 point
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"But because they have negotiated with the record companies, you can’t listen to anything unless you’re a member. "

I'm not sure your statement is correct regarding membership requirements at imeem, I don't see any forced sign ups right now.
Regardless - are you implying that imeem is a less functional service than muxtape because it has become legal? If that's the case doesn't that imply that muxtape's advantage is entirely temporary, since it will either become (a) legal and limited like imeem or (b) shut down entirely.

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