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"Project Opus, the music community that's been around for well over a year now, has launched a Facebook application.  Yep, another music-based Facebook application for you to check out.  So what's different?  Project Opus' new application is called Mixx, and it's a collaborative tool for the creation of a mix tape, of sorts.  \nIt's easy enough to use, and it begins by organizing content based on the arbitrary attitudes of you, the user.  So when you create a mix tape, Mixx will ask you to start out with the type of music you'd like, based on your mood/activity/purpose/whatever.  It's a one-liner approach that Viewpoints has also employed for the purpose of gathering some additional context surrounding the content you're about to incorporate into this application.  From what I can see, this sneaky way of pulling out information from users comes in handy for a variety of reasons, which I'll get to later on in this post.  \nSo, to get you started with this one-liner, Mixx gives you a leading sentence starter: \"I want music that...\"  You fill in the blank.  Here are some examples based on personal use for music: \nI want music that I can clean the house toI want music that will get me through a 4 hour road trip from Indianapolis to Ann ArborI want music that I can listen to while drinking white wineI want music that will get me hyped for a girls night out\n\nOnce you've gotten your one-liner out the way, you can add music to your mix tape.  The music, however, will need to come from your computer.  That's right, you'll need to upload it.  There are a couple of reasons for this, besides the obvious legal issues.  Project Opus has this idea that the music you're most likely to add to your mix tape will also be most likely to be already sitting on your hardrive.  I'll beg to differ due to the overwhelming presence of iTunes, which doesn't really let you take music across applications very easily.  \nWhat's more, I'm sure you're all wondering why Project Opus wants to host all these mp3s you and your friends will be uploading, right?  Well, I don't have an answer for you, but I do have a reason to return to the aforementioned usefulness of Mixx gathering contextual data around the playlists you create.  Given that Project Opus may have a lot of server costs to cover should Mixx gain in popularity, the company will also need to generate some positive cash flow, to its own pocketbook and those of content owners.  \nThat means that the whole of Mixx as an application will be used to promote the legal purchasing of music for artists.  And if Project Opus can give some additional information on how its music is being associated for end users (i.e. Bohemian Rhapsody is being used for house parties, drunken tequila night's at Johnny's, and Richard Simmons work outs), then music companies and even Project Opus can provide better recommendations and employ improved marketing tactics to consumers and users alike.  All of this makes it more likely that a music company will appreciate (as opposed to resent) Project Opus' Mixx application.  Hopefully that will eventually lead to the legal use of searchable music libraries for adding music to your mix tapes, like Mixaloo.\nOnto the collaborative aspect of Mixx.  Once you've gotten the ball rolling with your theme and your songs from your computer, you can select Facebook friends to help you build out your mix tape even further. While you don't have to allow your friends to add their contributions to your mix tape, it's more fun this way.  Similar to Kaltura's collaborative photo album, Mixx is leveraging Facebook's existing social graph to enable a combined effort for the creation of a mix tape that everyone can enjoy.  From the Mixx application, you can access your own mixes as well as those of your friends.  The buck stops here: you can't see any mixes of users outside of your networks.  \nI'm actually interested to see how participation and uptake is occurring around music-based Facebook applications, especially for the purpose of self-promotion, so if you have any thoughts on this, feel fee to leave some comments below.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/01/03/project-opus-mixx/>