OpenTape: 5 Legitimate Uses ( 1 not so much )
What is OpenTape?
When muxtape closed up shop due to pressure from the RIAA, they left behind a great open source software package called OpenTape… This beautiful piece of software lets you to create your own muxtape clone instantly. Some think this is muxtape’s way of sticking it to the RIAA, since its virtually impossible to police the thousands of individual sites that will pop up because of this.
However, besides the obvious usage scenario… are there actually some legitimate and potentially profitable ways that people can use this software? Let’s take a look at 5 ideas:
1. Podcast Sharing Site
Imagine a web app where you can upload (or simply subscribe to) your favorite podcasts and listen to them from anywhere. Assuming these podcasts are freely distributable, there should be no legal issues here. Throw in some social networking aspects to this site, and you have a full fledged social podcast sharing site. Not only can you listen to your own subscriptions from any computer at any time… but you can also listen in on what your friends are interested in at any time as well. OpenTape should be able to handle the core functionality easily… just add your own web 2.0 code and you are done!
2. Youtube for Music
Muxtape is working on a way to help bands introduce their music to the world… but it would be cool if someone created a full-fledged Youtube-like service for music and audio files. Sure, video is more interesting… but with the OpenTape code you can stream user-uploaded music to anyone easily. This would be useful for individual bands and artists just starting out, people who want to show off their mixing talents, or just random audio clips that people find interesting. It will be hard to monitor all the uploads and look for questionable content (as it was on Youtube), but it could be a cool concept if done right.
3. Children’s Music / Public Domain Music Site
I recently had a baby boy… and have spent lots of time looking for random children’s music to play for him (think, “twinkle twinkle little star”, “itsy bitsy spider”, etc.). I did end up picking up a couple CDs from the store, but I also found tons of public domain music online. They are scattered all over the place, and it would be great if someone created a searchable site with all this music in one spot. This could extend to different niches, besides just children’s music… but that’s the first thing that came to mind. I could then leave a browser open and play music while watching the baby, allowing me to work peacefully.
4. Voice Over and Sound Byte Marketplace
Someone could use OpenTape to create a marketplace for voice over talents and sound byte creators to sell their products and advertise their services. It could be similar to getty images, where you can easily buy stock images and photos within the self-serve marketplace… however, this site would be even better since anyone could upload and promote their own voice samples or stock sound bytes.The database would then be easily searchable for streaming audio samples, and the actual ful quality audio files could be downloaded instantly after payment is received.
5. Personal Playlist Sharing
Imagine listening to your home music collection from any computer (like at work or traveling with your laptop)… or better yet, sharing your music with just your family and buddies. All you need to do is install OpenTape on your personal computer instead of a public web server and use software like Remobo to give yourself and your friends direct access from any other computer. Remobo will bypass your firewall and NAT settings, so there’s no need for a static IP or special network configurations, making it even easier. But more importantly, it will also encrypt all the data coming to and from your computer (so not even your ISP can see what you are doing). In fact, the network traffic will ust look like you are working from home via a corporate VPN! Here’s a full tutorial on setting this all up easily.
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