Right on the homepage, Ffffoundtape.com bills itself as “the lovechild of Ffffound! and Muxtape.” While I give them credit for honesty, I have to say that bastard offspring, not lovechild, is a better term. As they admit, Ffffoundtape copies ideas from everybody, but much to my dismay they bring nothing new to the table.
Using Ffffoundtape.com is pretty easy (certainly easier than spelling/typing their name). To add an MP3 to Fffoundtape you either enter its URL at the site or grab a bookmarklet (for Mozilla and Safari users only) and click it when your browser is open to an MP3 file. You have to enter the song information by hand regardless of whether you use the bookmarklet method or paste the link – no cool technology to copy the text for you. In order to bookmark a song, the page has to contain a visible link to the MP3 file. So you can just use ffffoundtape to go over to Imeem or MySpace and try to collect songs.
Essentially that’s it – other “ffffounders” can now find this music. The player they use for music is pretty basic – but it works and the music streaming I tried was not interrupted or full of skips. You can use the MP3s and create playlists and customize the image that represents that album or playlist you created. The mind-numbing screen capture below shows you how few people bother with the custom album covers. Uploading is pretty easy, so I think this reflects how little the users have invested in ffffoundtape.
Ffffoundtape is trying to take elements from the photo-bookmarking and discovery site FFFOUND! which allows users to post and share their favorite images found on the web. Beyond that it also dynamically recommends images based on each user’s tastes and interests for an what seems like an inspirational image-bookmarking experience! I use the words “seems” because one of the great strengths in FFFOUND is that is is invitation only and it is a sought after invite. All I can see are the general photos – and some pretty cool ones at that!
Ffffoundtape is trying to take elements from Muxtape and other MP3 sharing sites. Since Ffffoundtape offers no searching, uploading or downloading, it might survive longer than sites like Muxtape. I don’t think they will be able to pin any digital music rights issues on ffffoundtape. When a violation of the digital rights is reported – it will be up to the sites hosting the MP3s, not ffffoundtape, to take them down. The worst will be some dead links on ffffoundtape – but that won’t be anything new to folks who thrive on shared MP3 files.
Ffffoundtape even copies the idea of combining these elements from Hypetape which bills itself as “the illegitimate lovechild of Hype Machine and Muxtape.” I did not look at the actual code (HTML etc) but I suspect that too was copied from somewhere!
From a Digital Millennium Copyright Act perspective, Ffffoundtape should be in the clear. However, from a usability and value perspective – this is not a site that is worth investing much time in.
dagsmith
MusicPlayer.me Contributor
Popularity: 1% [?]
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
