Muxtape Explains RIAA Shutdown

Apparently we haven’t heard the last of Muxtape, the free music “mix tape” service that the RIAA had shut down due to copyright infringement.

AppScout reports that in a letter posted on the company’s Web site, Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette said that the RIAA either didn’t know or didn’t care that Muxtape was already in talks with the four major record labels, and demanded that Amazon Web Services shut down the servers that Muxtape was hosted on.

“In the end, Muxtape’s legality was moot,” Ouellette wrote. “I didn’t have any money to defend against a lawsuit, just or not, so the major labels had an ax over my head either way. I always told myself I’d remove any artist or label that contacted me and objected, no questions asked. Not a single one ever did. On the contrary, every artist I heard from was a fan of the site and excited about its possibilities. I got calls from the marketing departments of big labels whose corporate parents were supposed to be outraged, wanting to know how they get could their latest acts on the home page.”

The founder went on to say that he’s working on retooling the service for a re-launch sometime in the future.

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