Track This Mix!

[jaredhobbs]

This is a shameless plug for the website I made for my senior software engineering project (in computer science). The site is http://www.trackthismix.com and the premise is making and trading mixtapes or mixcds. A user registers with the site, creates a mix and uploads the playlist along with a location where they're going to leave it. The user then gets a mix ID number and should then write the number and website address on the cd and leave it where they said they would. When someone finds the cd, they can look up the ID at the site and comment on it. The site will track the submitted and found cds of registered users and there's also a search for registered users.

So what do you guys think? We got around 40 people here at UNM to sign up and start making mixes in the week that we've been up and running. Why not sign up at the site and start making mixes of your own? Could be fun!

Jared

[jaredhobbs]

I forgot to mention, although the link is hidden at the bottom of the "about" page, you can see a map of registered users here: http://www.trackthismix.com/usermap. It's kinda neat to see where people are signing up from. Of course, we've had anonymous users visit the site from all over the world...

[saint]

While this sounds like a cool sociological experiment, where does it fall as far as respecting copyright goes?

[CheffoJeffo]

Can you perhaps be clearer about your intentions ?

I have registered and been through the site.

It looks like you are combining geocaching and Napster (dated terminology, I know, but both should be readily recognized) ... which means that, unless folks register near to me, and I am then willing to physically go find a CD that they have hidden, that my participation is wasted ... unless I hide a physical CD of music somewhere (in which case I cannot use any of my playlists since they all contain copyrighted music).

It seems to me that you are being deliberately obtuse ... although I am intrigued by the intellectual aspects of the puzzle.

Of course, I could be totally off base ...

[jaredhobbs]

So as far as intentions go, this website is a way to facilitate the trading of mixtapes with friends or other people. There's a bunch of forums that link people up to share mixtapes or cds but they all require a user to mail the mix to the other person. This kinda makes it local, so the more people in your city to sign up and use the site the better. We did get the idea for the site from geocaching and sites like "Where's George?". Another use for the site was we wanted a way for local bands to promote their music by giving away cds. We were going to implement something where a band could burn a bunch of copies and get a special ID that shows up with a different icon or something and maybe let them have a little advertisement page. We didn't have time to implement all the features we wanted before the deadline was up.

As far as copyrights, I suppose that for the duration of the class any mixes made with copyrighted music would fall under fair use. After that though, as stated in the user agreement, you would need to either own the copyright to the music (like, if the mix is music from your own band) or use free music (such as creative commons licensed music). People have been making mixtapes since the 70s with copyrighted music however, so I don't know all the legal aspects of making them. One of the guys in our group made the point that if someone wanted to use this site to commit copyright infringement, it'd probably be the least effective way to do it...

Interesting topic... Anyone else have opinions?

[CheffoJeffo]

Interesting ... but to be crystal clear, the "sharing" is of physical CDs, as opposed to playlists or digital copies, right ?

By way of background, I was a DJ in a previous life and I made many (!) mixed tapes and shared them with my friends when we all went off to university in 1985. In fact, most nights in August 1985 would find the lot of us at somebody's house making eleventy copies of somebody's mixed tape.

What you are looking for folks to do is physically stash their mixed CDs someplace and then for other folks to find and report on them -- right ?

It is an interesting idea and I totally love the potential for local bands to promote themselves in this fashion.

[jaredhobbs]

Interesting ... but to be crystal clear, the "sharing" is of physical CDs, as opposed to playlists or digital copies, right ?

By way of background, I was a DJ in a previous life and I made many (!) mixed tapes and shared them with my friends when we all went off to university in 1985. In fact, most nights in August 1985 would find the lot of us at somebody's house making eleventy copies of somebody's mixed tape.

What you are looking for folks to do is physically stash their mixed CDs someplace and then for other folks to find and report on them -- right ?

It is an interesting idea and I totally love the potential for local bands to promote themselves in this fashion.

Thats correct, this is for sharing PHYSICAL cds or tapes. When you create a mixcd on the site, you type out the playlist and a location where you're going to drop it. There's a line in there for specific details too (ie. Left it in the Mechanical Engineering building, 1st level at UNM). The only people that can see the playlist is the person who created it and the people that have found it and entered the ID. Registered users can comment on a cd they found too.

For local band promotion, we were thinking of something like a little banner ad that links to a map with a special marker (like the cover art or something) on the location where they're leaving the cds. This location could be a record shop or a restaurant or whatever. When someone enters the ID for one of these special "promotions", it would still show up on the search map (a normal cd is taken out of the searches when it's been found).

[CheffoJeffo]

This is really starting to intrigue me ... less for the sharing of *my* mixed CDs, but more for potentially sharing music from local artists.

I have CDs from a couple of local artists where I  have prior permission to duplicate and distribute as I see fit -- they have no illusions and just want their music heard.

Maybe I'll check with them and see what they think ... it can't be that much of a pain for me to make copies and leave them someplace to be found.

 

[jaredhobbs]

That would be pretty cool. I'm probably going to try to add those local artist promoting features some time this summer (when I have time!) We're also going to try to use this site to promote some local NM bands.

[RayB]

Kinda weird honestly.

I prefer the money tracker I once saw stamped on a 10 dollar bill. Basically, you go to the URL, enter the unique # off the bill, and you get a history of all the people that bill has passed hands through (and who bothered to record receipt of it on the website). Real interesting to see where that money has travelled!