foomandoonian

Last month, the mixtape website Muxtape went down, leaving the understated message: 'Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.'

Users jumped to the pretty reasonable conclusion that Muxtape is effectively dead, although the official support tumblelog says: 'No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned.'

Muxtape is dead. Long live Opentape.fm

Dead or not, seemingly the same instant Muxtape went down, Opentape.fm sprung up.

Opentape's creation and design are inspired by Muxtape's success and sleek interface. We were disappointed with its untimely shutdown and wanted the web mixtape movement to continue.

Molly Wood on Buzz Out Loud expressed a theory that 'the RIAA's constant crackdown on sites and services that ought to be fair use is creating cockroach-like, drug-resistant strains... like Opentape'. Speculation aside, Opentape is all the cooler for being open source and easy to install on your own website. The same slick Ajaxy page is all there, except instead of the links to buy music on Amazon, Opentape has a direct link to the MP3. It also has a flash player you can embed elsewhere:

Roundup

• Read Write Web has a good overview, and Lifehacker has the nicest guide to installing Opentape.
• Get more help from the official forums.
• Subscribe to the Opentape tumblelog, and follow them on Twitter.
• And, of course, download Opentape.