"I have seen the future of Internet music, and it is 8tracks"

8tracks, I love you.

There are many reasons that 8tracks is better than Muxtape ever was; to enumerate them will require a full magazine of bullets (listed below).

• It's possible to upload more than one track at a time. Muxtape veterans will appreciate this; you don't have to wait until one track is done loading to load another. Cue them up and go take out the garbage, as I just did. Then you can write your blog while the list uploads, as I am doing now.
• You can embed your mix on your blog. Oooooooh. This is fantastic. That's the whole reason I want those mixes--so I can share them with the handful of pals who check in with me from time to time. I'm gonna re-load some of my favorite Muxtape mixes (not all of them, I had 23 of them at the time of Muxtape's demise).
• You can "follow" the mixes of other 8track mixerpeople. Hard to imagine, but there are scores of mix addicts like me out there, and now I can listen to their stuff.
• You can add cover art to your mix. Oh yes, it's true, with Muxtape you could specify an RGB color to go with your mix. But this is much cooler--I'm gonna make some customized square picture with Photoshop every time I make a mix. What fun!
• You can create multiple mixes. I mean, I did it anyway with Muxtape, but here it's built in and part of the fun. Related to the "following" feature above, you can tune into the mixes of folks who have taste you admire.
• They have the right philosophy: 70s freeform radio + 80s mixtapes + 90s DJ culture = INTERNET MUSIC HEAVEN.
• It's apparently (purportedly, at any rate) all legal! Some loopholes having to do with Internet radio make this joy possible.
  

I am so darn excited.