To test the service I searched three very different artists, chose a song by each, and explored the "One-Click Playlist" option. The results were confusing and at times pitiable, but marginally successful.

[Note: Looks like every time you re-visit the playlist links there are different videos, so what I'm writing about (the playlist as I originally saw it) may not match up to what you see if you click the link.]

The "Wires and Waves" (Rilo Kiley) Playlist
In the great tradition of Pandora, it seems Soundflavor is keen to match bands primarily on the gender of their singer. As a long-time Rilo Kiley fan and a self-respecting human, I'm insulted that Tori Amos showed up on this list. A truly horrific misstep. Other failures include a video of a guy playing a ukulele for the song "Hammond" by Birdie, labeling "Knowing the Things That I Know" by The Blow as "Come On Petunia" (another YouTube mishap), and many shitty live recordings. That being said, the playlist essentially served its purpose of introducing me to new music. I enjoyed songs by Sahara Hotnights and Thao, neither of which I'd heard before, and was convinced that the Fiery Furnaces have put out at least one song since Gallowsbird's Bark actually worth my time ("Police Sweater Blood Vow" from Bitter Tea).

The "Pencil Thin Mustache" (Jimmy Buffett) Playlist
This playlist is definitely the most disastrous of the three. The second video on the list—after the bizarrely artsy clip for "Pencil Thin Mustache"—is a particularly rough-around-the-edges good ol' boy doing a karaoke version of MIckey Gilley's "Don't The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time" in front of green screen pictures of pretty ladies and ladies who start to look pretty at closing time (Rosie O'Donnell, for example). The other lowlight among a list of generally underwhelming selections is an uncalled-for and downright creepy Cliff Richard video. Also, for some reason, the Monkees seem to be curiously grouped in with Jimmy Buffett; there's a clip for "Good Clean Fun" and a Michael Nesmith solo track. There are a few good—or at least apropos—selections ("Tokin's" by Steve Miller Band, "Helpless" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young), but the vast majority of the videos are just terrible covers of already pretty bad songs.

The "I Love Boosters!" (The Coup) Playlist
If there's one thing I learned from this playlist, it's that political rap fans are upstanding YouTube users. Out of 25 videos there's only one glitch—some Irish dude with an acoustic guitar in what's supposed to be a video for "Emotional" by Listener. But other than that I was presented with official music videos, good live performances, or simply the song with a picture of the artist. It's definitely the most successful of the three playlists; almost all the videos function as intended, all of the tracks fit in with "I Love Boosters!" and many of them are actually good suggestions.

On a scale of 1-10 (1 being completely useless, 10 being the ultimate music consumption tool), Soundflavor is at about 6.5. It's got the slick Web 2.0 interface of Pandora, but with more control, and the database features of Allmusic, but with more functionality. As an information aggregator it's pretty impressive—even drawing from Flickr tags to provide pictures on an artist's page—but its glitches are many and frequent, and its artificial taste has a long way to go if it thinks I'm in any way interested in Michael Nesmith's solo career.

Yesterday Dan Gibson and I were wondering if we should even post about the site, because we didn't want too much attention to be drawn its way. But according to its terms of service, Muxtape is a totally self-policing community! Or at least it should be:

Muxtape is a service for creating mixtapes. Users may not upload multiple songs from the same album or artist, or songs they do not have permission to let Muxtape use. Individual users may not create multiple muxtapes. Accounts not meeting these restrictions are subject to termination without notice. Muxtape will never reveal your email address to a third party. Muxtape is alive.

Hmm, that seems a little bit passing-the-buck to me, no? "You get the rights, we'll host the streams. Everybody wins! Especially us when we start selling ads." Have the creators of Muxtape not been following the saga of imeem, or the whole Internet radio thing? Even artists that aren't on the oh-so-evil major labels may want the money that they're owed for each stream—and I find it hard to believe that the Muxtape creators weren't at least somewhat aware of the current battle over Internet radio royalties. But then again, throwing up their hands and saying "Uh, I dunno!" when asked about the nuts and bolts of legal issues surrounding the idea of copyright seems to be par for the course for a lot of these music-tech startups, which are more focused on getting their code to market than pesky things like paying musicians. And I'm not the only person who sees this as something of a copout:

What is the definition of Muxtape? It isn't a download and it isn't peer-to-peer file sharing. It's basically a watered down internet radio or streaming. And yes, these configurations still require licensing and payment of royalties. (streaming rates yet to be determined) Either through a performance license or mechanical license depending on if the medium is classified as programmed radio or on-demand streaming. This goes back to the terms of use. This is a commonly used disclaimer in the latest up and coming websites. It attempts to put the responsibility of licensing on the user instead of the person behind the scenes.

Something tells me that my pals who have set up these "tapes" so far haven't gotten in touch with the artists they're featuring—although maybe Travis can pay himself if he ever decides to include one of his own tracks.

Muxtape [Official site]
Users may not upload songs... [something creative will go here]
[Image via My Chemical Toilet]