Opinion: Muxtape Music Service Shut Down By RIAA

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37signals.com called Muxtape a “dead simple, absolutely clear, quenches a common thirst of sharing songs with friends, can’t mess-up easy” service. Muxtape is a free service that provides an easy interface to upload and share songs with friends. Users can upload up to 12 songs. Muxtape is like an online jukebox type of service.

Though, Muxtape allows sharing with friends, it only allows its members to listen to songs rather than download them; it has a unique encrypted security feature that doesn’t let anyone download the song. The site also provides a link option for every song uploaded to Muxtape, so if the user likes the song they can buy the music from Amazon.com. Muxtape was sort of helping artists unlike many other music services, which don’t offer any protection for artists.

Despite its pros, the RIAA doesn't want the site up and running and sent a legal notice to shut down. When you visit Muxtape, you will receive the following message:

Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.

Kristen from Mashable.com said the RIAA is the only one with the rights to upload the majority of available music anywhere. The RIAA argues both individual customers who bought the songs, and Muxtape, do not have the rights to upload and share songs via a social network. So, even if an individual buys an entire music album, he or she cannot put it on a site for others to listen to, according to the RIAA.

Another victim that will soon fall to the RIAA's demands is Pandora, an online radio station. The site said they will have to shut down their music service because the RIAA is demanding a high royalty rate for every song heard on the site.

This is yet another victory for the RIAA, who (in my opinion) has no clue how to run a business online and would rather see innovation die for money and greed.