8tracks.com Reviewed

As we mentioned yesterday, the online music service Muxtape shut down. While this is yet another lame move by the RIAA, I’ve found I don’t miss Muxtape. It was really just too basic of a service for me to get into it or hyped up about it. Plus, having to upload one track at a time really sucked. So with Muxtape gone, I decided to give 8tracks.com a go.

Sign up is easy. Very straightforward stuff. The interface is much cleaner and reminds me of the old version of Last.fm. Anyways, you login and create a mix. This mix contains 8 tracks, all of which will not be revealed unless a listener listens to your mix all the way through. You can upload all your tracks at once (in a queue) and go make a sandwich while they upload. Once that’s done, just drag your tracks to the mix and figure out an order. Create your mix and you’re good to go!

One of the best features about 8tracks is how you can create multiple mixes. This enables you to make a rock mix, an electronic mix and such so that you’re not stuck with the same Smiths song playing over and over. Speaking of The Smiths, 8tracks only lets you upload a maximum of two tracks by the same artist. This keeps things mixed up and probably has to do with some copyright and/or streaming laws.

Additionally, 8tracks doesn’t let skip through a song. You can start the mix and skip forward. That’s it. It works out nicely because if you like a mix, you get to see each new song as it plays so you have some element of surprise in your endeavor. There’s a bit of a social networking aspect to the site too. Users can favorite mixes and tracks, leave comments and find friends.

Overall, 8tracks is a truly better experience than Muxtape. To boot, it’s also legal (or so I hear), so you can use it without repercussions. If you’d like to check mine out, just hit the link to 8tracks.com below.

Link