For the last 6 months I have been an avid user of the website Mixwit.  The “mix tape” sharing site allows users to create online mixtapes and share them with friends.  Users can pull songs directly into Mixwit using a built in search from services like Skreemr, Seeqpod, and ccMixter or they can manually add songs from outside websites.

Unfortunately I received a message in my e-mail this evening from Mixwit announcing that the site is shutting down on December 27.  According to Mixwit’s blog the original shutdown date was December 21, but due to hosting issues they will be up for 6 extra days.

No real details were provided as to why the site was shutting down, but Mixwit creators Mike and Radley had this to say,

“We’ve put a year of work into Mixwit so this choice wasn’t taken lightly. I
won’t go into the details of our situation but state simply that we
boldly marched into in a position best described as “between a rock and a
hard place.” We’re very grateful to be have been part of the mixtape
revival of ‘08 and are satisfied to be able to to bow out while things
are still good.”

On December 27 profiles will be turned off and by December 31st the site will be completely dark.  Mixwit’s creators are looking for a way to make the mixtape artwork and playlists available for historical purposes, and will notify users via e-mail where they’ll be able to find their stuff by the end of the year. In addition they are considering donating their source code the OpenTape project.

I have personally put months of time, effort, and even emotion into some of my mixes.  Over the last six months I created nearly sixty mixes, many of which had significant meaning to me.  A close friend of mine and I exchanged mixes on an almost daily basis for months.  The mixes themselves tell a story and act almost as a yearbook for her and I.  I also built my popular Twilight Saga soundtracks on Mixwit.

I hate to see the site go since I was a big fan of the site and saw a lot of potential in it.  I wish the best of luck to Mike and Radley, and any others involved in the project in their future ventures.

A few months back I was turned on to Mixwit while browsing through my reader one day.  Prior to reading a blog post about it, I was unaware that sites like Mixwit even existed. Mixwit is a media mash up platform that allows users to create unique “mix tapes” that can have completely customized skins and add tracks from Skreemr and Seeqpod by default, or they can provide tracks from an outside site that hosts MP3’s.

The site which originally allowed you to only create a mix and share it with friends via various outside social platforms such as Facebook or Myspace, took a step to make itself more social in late July when it added friend/fan capability.  I quickly added my few real life friends that were using the service, but following the addition of some outside fans I realized that the Mixwit site was severely lacking in something; the ability to communicate with other mixers.

Following the closure of Muxtape I gained a couple of new fans on Mixwit following a comment I made in one of Michael Wiegand’s plurks about alternative services to Muxtape.  The downside is that Michael and I aren’t friends outside of Plurk.  I have no way of sharing my thoughts on his mixes unless I go on Plurk and tell him.  This troubled me a bit because I really enjoyed a couple of his mixes.  So late last week I shot a quick note to Mixwit using their feedback page with the following, “I love your service I use it almost daily to trade mixes with a co-worker.  But I was thinking that it would be cool if you could leave comments on peoples mixes.  Obviously they should be able to be moderated, but I thought it would be kinda cool.  Just my thoughts…”.  I was excited to find a response in my e-mail on Saturday from the Mixwit co-founder Radley.  The response read, “it’s something we have planned to release soon…”  If this is true and they follow through with this we will soon have the ability to add comments to other people’s mixes, which I think will add a totally great element to the service.

I can only hope that “soon” in terms of upgrades to their service runs in a similar fashion to replies to their feedback since Radley’s response was VERY timely.  If you haven’t checked out Mixwit I highly recommend it.  I’ve created over 40 different mixes with varying themes and probably won’t stop until people stop listening to them or the site pulls the plug.  Feel free to check out my mixes.