What’s next in Online Music – Tunesbag and Mixcloud

Here at MusicPlayer we’ve gone behind the scenes at some new products that are so new they are still in beta, pre-release testing to those of us who aren’t fluent in the Geek language. Let’s take a look at the future of Internet radio in Mixcloud and the hope for effective music backup and synchronization with Tunebags.

Mixcloud
Most internet radio sites allow you to choose the channels you want to listen to. Mixcloud wants to change that approach and makes the unit of value the radio show – not a channel.

Mixcloud’s business pitch is very simple – they want to be “The Youtube of radio”. Just like YouTube has created a universe of user generated video content and introduced the world to new performers, Mixcloud wants to do the same for audio programming. You can’t upload one song or one track – Mixcloud is committed to providing a full show or mix, with track list, that listeners can appreciate in totality.

The site itself is beautiful in its simplicity. You can get up and running – either listening or uploading in just a few minutes. Also, they rely on their music player so you don’t have to get caught up in having or configuring the right version of other music players. The site has all the “traditional” Web 2.0 social features with leave comments on track lists, follow shows that you like and see how popular a show is with the number of times it’s been listened to.

Mixcloud is just in beta so the number of listeners and the quantity of shows is pretty tiny. Just look at this visitor traffic report – yes those visitor counts are in the thousands.

I would love to be able to say I was one of YouTube’s first viewers – but that would be a big lie. But, if Mixcloud takes off I’ll get my story to tell other folks over a beer. If you have a radio voice or an indy band I would be making a dash to Mixcloud to get onboard.

EDIT - 05/09/08 The guys at mixcloud have offered MusicPlayer.me 50 signups for our readers. You can now go to their sign up page and register using the code: musicplayerme.

Tunesbag
TunesBag is a free online audio library where you can store your music, create playlists and share with friends and other users. It is similar to Lala and Echodio – check out the article Synchronization – Music Wherever and Whenever to learn more about those sites – which also help you to synchronize and store your music. The basic idea is to give you access to music that you own even when you are not at your own computer.

Tunesbag lets you upload files in four ways – via the browser from your PC, via a desktop uploader (software you download), by emailing the file to Tunesbag and by pointing to any MP3 file on the net. We’ll talk more about the legal issues but that last one is just asking for trouble. Tunesbag puts up a pathetic message “We respect the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same” that is sure to neither stop any users nor impress the “music police.” Getting back to the uploading it is easy – though you do have to wait a few minutes after the upload till you can access it – a pain in our real time world.

Once the files are uploaded you’ve accomplished something that most music users don’t have – safe backups. But then you can do more as n the Tunesbag library you can sort your music by genre, artist or album. Each song has options to play (using the built in Tunesbag player), add it to a playlist, add comments, get recommendations on other songs you might like and much more. Tunesbag has an easy to use interface that will be a breeze for any iTunes user. There is also integration with social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and Bebo.

I haven’t switched from Lala yet – but I probably like Tunesbag a bit better. The Tunesbag ease of use and integration is nice. My holdup as you’ll see in a second is that Lala is in the clear on a digital rights while Tunesbag is in the grey territory.

You gotta ask these days – are they legal?
Just like YouTube and the music sites Seeqpod and Muxtape, Mixcloud is likely to run into trouble with Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) closely monitoring how they handle monitoring to ensure that all materials are fully licensed. And Mixcloud already discussed this issue in their blog Commoditising Music? – and that is spelled right since they are all Brits not us “z” loving Americans.

I think they will run into challenges, but Mixcloud is much more like YouTube than Seeqpod or Muxtape. Mixcloud wants original user generated content like indy bands that own their own material. Just like YouTube has attracted Disney/ABC to air some show on YouTube, Mixcloud has the potential to attract DJs from XM Radio or radio networks like National Public Radio shows that want to expand their reach in this age of new media. But as folks upload playlists full of commercial songs that are unlicensed – it’s going to be interesting to see happens. I hope they can succeed like YouTube where the user generated content takes off while the uploading of illegal software is the tiny issue.

Tunesbag FAQ claims that they are on legal grounds: “TtunesBag can only be used to manage music you already have. You can share your library with friends according to the law in Austria.” I am not a lawyer, but if that is true you would think that Napster, Seeqpod and all those sites would have been in a mad dash for Austria – where the hills would truly be alive with the sounds of music! I think they have the potential for issues with the file sharing – but I think they also have a lot of power in the basic application of allowing the user to store and listen to their own music.

Try them out yourself
Both of these products require an invite to join right now – but if you do a little searching on for “Mixcloud invite” or “Tunesbag invite” and you might get lucky and be able to get an immediate account. Otherwise, you can also sign up for an invite at their site and get in line. Maybe you’ll be able to say “I was there when it all began, I remember the early days of Mixcloud.”

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