Webware

Dying companies should take note of Mixwit's strategy to preserve user data. The now-dead mix tape-sharing service, which closed its doors in late December, is now offering users a way to save their mixes and tape designs for reuse elsewhere.

Former Mixwit users received an e-mail early Wednesday detailing how to download a permanent archive of their mix tape data which includes both a track list and the design of their virtual cassette tape. This data will continue to be hosted on Mixwit-is-dead.com through April, giving users about a month to make a back up.

While Mixwit is no longer hosting the tools that let you build these tapes, or the players that can be embedded in social-networking profiles and blogs, the good news is that the idea behind the site is still very much alive. The project has moved on to Mixwidget.org, which lets you accomplish a similar feat by hosting everything on your own server. This isn't as user friendly, or mass market as Mixwit was, but should be a healthy alternative to the Opentape.fm project.

Users still looking to get their hosted mix tape jones can always use services like GrooveShark, 8Tracks, and Blip.fm.

Former Mixwit users now have the option to download the contents of their old mix tapes--except for the music tracks that is.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Facebook announced Tuesday that it has followed MySpace's lead and will ban Project Playlist from its service. According to the company, it has removed the Project Playlist app from Facebook and all embedded playlists have been removed from user profiles. Facebook said in a statement that it hopes Project Playlist can come to an amicable agreement with the labels so users can get back to using the app.

The New York Times announced Wednesday that it witnessed its online ad revenues drop for the first time in the site's history. According to the company, its online ad revenue slumped by 3.8 percent in November and total revenue from all its continuing advertising operations dropped by 20.9 percent.

Friendfinder Networks, a company that offers adult-oriented sites, is filing for an initial public offering with the SEC. According to documents released by the federal regulatory body, Friendfinder Networks wants to use the IPO to raise $460 million from the sale of the shares to pay off its enormous debt.

TripVerde, a company that provides online carpooling services in an attempt to reduce U.S. vehicle mileage by 3 percent to 5 percent in three years, announced Monday that it has launched a new site to connect those people who plan on traveling to Washington, D.C., for President-elect Obama's inauguration in January. According to the company, it will pair up like-minded people from the same region to carpool to the event. In order to be considered, visitors need to sign up for TripVerde's service and fill out information about themselves. Once complete, TripVerde will find individuals with the same interests and start the process of connecting them.

JS-Kit, a company that adds interactivity to Web sites through widgets and other tools, announced Monday that it has added a new feature to its service that allows users to add pictures to their comments on more than 600,000 sites the company partners with. According to the company, each image will be "auto-thumbnailed," but users can click on that image for full-size viewing. The image addition is available now on all those sites JS-Kit currently works with.

Even though MySpace banned Project Playlist late last Friday, the company had some good news to share Monday: it has inked a deal with Sony BMG to offer its users legal access to the label's entire library of tracks. It's a step in the right direction for Project Playlist, since the company is trying desperately to stay afloat after EMI, Universal, and Warner Music sued the company earlier this year. There's currently no indication those labels will negotiate with Project Playlist, though.

Web publishing platform Posterous announced Monday that it has launched a group blogs feature that allows users to add friends to its list of authorized users, allowing them to post Web sites and other information to their shared page. The company also announced that it has raised $725,000 in a round of financing that was led by XG Ventures.

MySpace has officially blocked access to embedded widgets from Project Playlist, one of the myriad start-ups that lets members create music playlists and share them with friends.

This could come across negatively because MySpace runs MySpace Music, a service that competes with Project Playlist. And that's probably why the News Corp.-owned MySpace is making it very clear that it has blocked Project Playlist because of complaints from major music labels.

"MySpace is an open platform that welcomes all developers to build rich and legitimate applications for its global community," according to a statement from the company. "We take copyright issues very seriously and our goal is to help developers build a substantial business by creating an environment that respects rights holders and protects their content."

The statement continued: "MySpace has received notices of infringement about Project Playlist at different times from several of the major music companies currently suing Project Playlist. Per our policy of taking very seriously the requests of rights holders to block access to third party sites that are believed to be infringing, we have evaluated the requests of the major music companies and determined that it is in our best interest not to allow Project Playlist widgets on MySpace, and effective immediately, we will no longer be allowing these widgets within the MySpace platform."

Indeed, Warner Music, EMI, and Universal Music Group have ongoing lawsuits against Project Playlist, which recently hired former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Owen Van Natta as its CEO. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)--itself going through a major transition as it ends legal action against individual file-sharers and is rumored to be on the verge of budget cuts--also sued Project Playlist this past spring.

The fourth major label, Sony BMG, has been negotiating with the start-up.

The labels' complaint against Project Playlist was industrywide, not restricted to MySpace. However, Facebook, hasn't blocked Project Playlist widgets. Whether that's due to Van Natta's Facebook connection (he's also an investor in Project Playlist), or to anything else, is unclear. Because litigation is involved, neither party is commenting.

In the digital music industry, 2008 really was the year of the playlist. Streaming music companies took off, and improved social-network sharing features made it easy to swap your favorite music lineups with your friends.

Despite its rampant and well-documented problems, the music industry's muscle has been what's steering the direction of the movement. For example, the two highest-profile "mixtape" start-ups, Mixwit and Muxtape, both shut down amid the threat of legal action that their young founders didn't want to handle. Meanwhile, bigger companies like Imeem and iLike, both of which have negotiated with the record labels and struck deals, have fared better--despite a number of rumors that Project Playlist wants to merge with Imeem.

As for MySpace, the labels have all invested in MySpace Music, so it's understandable that the social network would be quick to respond to its concerns.

There's finally an end to the speculation over what former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta would do next: he's taken the job as CEO of a site called Project Playlist, according to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD.

He had already been an investor in the music discovery company, and there have been blog-circulated rumor about his new gig for several weeks now.

The move comes shortly after Van Natta withdrew his offer to take the CEO position at MySpace's new music venture. All signs now point to MTV exec Courtney Holt to take that job, but no formal announcement has been made.

AllThingsD confirms what many had figured: Van Natta, in his quest for a CEO position, wasn't interested in taking a job at a venture run by the News Corp.-owned MySpace. It's not quite a start-up, no matter how trendy its office space might be.

Start-up Project Playlist has snagged a hefty round of financing led by former AOL exec Bob Pittman's invested firm, Pilot Group--probably somewhere between $18 million and $20 million, Swisher wrote.

The New York-based Pilot Group stays low-key, but it already has a stake in a growing social-media site, Buzznet, which focuses on music and other pop-culture content and has an additional investment from Universal Music Group. Pilot Group was the majority owner of DailyCandy when the women's events newsletter site sold to Comcast for about $125 million earlier this year.

As for Project Playlist, it's a lot like Imeem or the ill-fated Muxtape: members can build playlists and embed them across the Web. The site was sued by the RIAA back in April. Like Muxtape, it's fairly stripped-down, but a ticker at the top of the page says that over 38 million playlists have been created.

Van Natta stepped down from his role at Facebook amid, naturally, plenty of rumors. He left the company in February as chief revenue officer, after having previously been chief operating officer, which some bloggers speculated was a demotion. When he left, he made it clear that he wanted a CEO post somewhere--which set off even more speculation that Van Natta had wanted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's job, and left when it looked like there was no chance the young founder would step aside. That's unconfirmed, of course.

The issue with a company like Project Playlist? Aside from its RIAA woes, which are pretty much protocol in the music business, the "music discovery" niche is clogged beyond belief. There's Imeem, Pandora, iLike and its popular Facebook app, and Last.fm (owned by CBS Interactive, which publishes CNET News). Even Apple's iTunes now has its "Genius" discovery sidebar, and MySpace Music is a high-profile new entry in the field. Even Van Natta's old company, Facebook, is rumored to be interested in doing more when it comes to music.

"Discovery around music is exploding on the Internet," Van Natta told AllThingsD when he spoke to Swisher about his new gig. "And the company that does the best job of taking advantage of that is really going to be huge."

Well, let's hope he picked the right one.

Imeem, the social music site that was thriving on user-created playlists before MySpace Music turned it into an industry trend, has announced a handful of tweaks and updates that users will be seeing soon.

Among them are a slightly redesigned homepage with featured music and video clips, a "browse" page to look at top song, artist, and genre charts, a "discover" feature that recommends music based on past history (seems like everybody's doing that these days), and individual "artist" pages that aggregate all of that artist's songs into a single place.

For Imeem, which has been subject to nagging user-interface complaints, this is a way to get the site focused and organized. "After all of that activity earlier this year, we had time to take a deep breath," Imeem vice president of marketing Matt Graves said to CNET News. Indeed, in the past year the company has acquired retail service Snocap and streaming site Anywhere.fm, and completed its array of licensing deals with all four major record labels.

And what does the company think of MySpace Music, which debuted in September? "We think that the combination of playlists in music and social networking is pretty powerful, and we've been doing it for two years," Graves said. But he took a few potshots, too, most notably at the fact that some indie artists have complained that MySpace Music focuses too much on the big guys. "We think that there are some things that are important in terms of what you offer. Indie music is a big part of what we do."

Plus, he said, Imeem offers more freedom. Its playlists are embeddable all over the Web, whereas MySpace Music's are restricted to user profiles and have some limits on length. "Given something that's locked in a profile or locked in their universe, or something that you can take anywhere, we think consumers see great value in something they can take anywhere," Graves said.

Imeem is, on the other hand, still much smaller than MySpace, with 28 million users as opposed to well over 100 million. But it's growing fast, Graves added: a year ago it was at only 10 million users.

Muzicons has to be one of the simplest music-sharing tools I've ever seen, and also the one with the most personality.

Unlike current Web 2.0 darling Muxtape, which lets you create a nice mix of music uploaded from your hard drive, Muzicons is a single-song affair. You still upload the music from your machine for it to host; the only difference is that there's no track list, no song title, and just a single button to play and pause the music. In fact, whoever creates the mix can tweak the buttons the listener will have access to, determining whether they can skip around the track and what song information is listed.

What makes Muzicons an especially memorable Web app is the care and attention that's been built in to the simple ways you can customize its look and feel. There are just two tweaks: one for color and another for the icon. If you've ever played the popular puzzle game Lumines, the icons feel very similar, and you've got a pick of more than 50 to choose from that will sit on the left side of the player.

When it comes time to share your creation you've only got two options: one set of code for blogs and Web sites, and another for BB code enabled forums or blog comments. If you're looking for some of the simple sharing options seen on other mixtape sites you're out of luck--for now at least.

I've embedded a Muzicon above with the song "She Sells Sanctuary" by The Cult. To make your own, go here.

Making a Muzicon is a simple three-step process. Pick the icon, upload your music, and drop in the code.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

WorldTV is one of the companies making its debut at today's NewTeeVee Conference here in San Francisco. The site is hyper-focused, letting users create custom channels containing videos taken from Google's videos properties, along with AOL and Yahoo's. Once you've added the videos either by URL or built-in search, you can simply pass along the permalinked URL to friends to have them watch your collection in a full-screen player.

Channels can be branded with a text logo that sits to the right of the player, although advanced users can go in and upload an image instead. There's also a built-in Webcam recorder that will let you record your own clips to insert on your channel, although anything you save takes the place of one of your other video segments. The advanced editor also lets you tweak things like video aspect ratio, player background, and playlist order.

WorldTV intends to make money through advertising by adding ad units to player pages combined with a revenue-sharing model that will let users add video ads to their playlists. Unlike YouTube and Revver, which have chosen traffic and viewership for their ad models, WorldTV thinks users are willing to mix in full on video ads in their playlist in the hopes of making a buck. They're also planning to roll out a premium model with a more advanced feature set for users who are willing to pay for more functionality.

While WorldTV is super simple, I think for the time being you're far better off using a more full-featured mashup service like SplashCast (coverage), which works with all sorts of video content from many other sources including text and audio. Also worth noting is YouTube's own playlist creation tool, which lets you add as many clips as you'd like, albeit only from their service. In the meantime, I've put together a test channel on WorldTV, which you can check out here.

Related: Yoink'd creates video playlists in seconds

WorldTV lets you make your own custom branded video player, although it's not as full featured as some of the competition.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

MyFlashFetish player

(Credit: CNET Networks)

If you're the sort of Web surfer who hangs out on social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook or someone who frequents MP3 blogs, you've surely seen and used one of the free Flash audio players in this article. All of the Web-based apps below let you add a functional music player to your home page or blog with no muss and very little fuss.

In this article, I am focusing on Web software that lets you create custom playlists with specific songs that you want to include. I also include Last.fm (the half in my count) because I love it, but its embeddable player works by offering a personal radio station based on your musical preferences. The music is fantastic, but you can't pick specific songs to add to your playlist.

I have compiled my own mixes using all of these players at a new blog. (I even used MyFlashFetish twice!) Go to MP3 Playlist Overload on Blogger to listen to some of my favorite music and try out the Flash players. I'm sure that there are lots of other free, embeddable music players online, so please tell me about your favorites in the comments. ... Read More