Electronic Music 411 - On Mixits - mixit, mixits, em411, site, music, life

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I recently met up with mulletballet in real life. It was good to sit and talk about music and synths and moving and life and stuff. We met mostly to talk about the Mixit, and where it is heading. I am sure he feels similarly, but I'd like to state my case for the mixit, ask some questions, and get a little feedback from all of you on what to do here.

So the mixits have done a lot for me. I've been in some rather dark times, and the mixits gave me a place where I could count on creativity and a forum to express myself through music during those times. The sense of community that I got from the mixits was great. I knew people would listen to my tracks, and I would get feedback on my mixes and the music. In short, the mixits have been the best thing for me as a musician, period. I am in debt to the mixits, and all the people who participated over the years.

We just finished Mixit 99. I remember the first one. That is crazy. We shouldn't let this die. I'm willing to work on it, and mulletballet has unlimited storage and bandwidth to throw at it. I think there are a few things that need to be decided first, though. This is were I'd love to hear from you, the faithful EM411'ers.

I would love to see EM411 host the mixit again. It was at its prime during that time, and I think it integrated well with the community. As I remember, the reasons for it not being hosted here were bandwidth and storage costs, as well as a bit of administration. If we provide bandwidth, storage, and administration, I'm sure something can be reached as a compromise. The site admin would have to allow us to do this, however. If you think it would work well here again, I'm perfectly willing to do the admin work, mulletballet is willing to offer bandwidth and storage, and we'd have to convince the admin to allow this. We'd need to convince him that this will work. This may require some amount of petition. I think this is the best option, but again, we are at mercy of the admin.

The other option is to move the mixits to a permanent solution, with its own site, and its own CMS. There are a lot of things that can be built for this purpose, but it will take time, work, and participation. If we do end up moving it to a new site, this will mean new usernames/passwords, which I think may be a part of this problem as well. It occurs to me at this point that the only way to make this work without EM411 would be to compete with EM411, and that is not something I'm particularly keen on doing. At the risk of having my account suspended or banned here, I would do that if that meant keeping the mixit going.

Now, regardless of which option we go with, I'd like to know what you, the mixit artists, want from it. I know that people have talked about rating systems, prizes, winners, and more. This, I think, is the most important part of this all. We want the community behind the mixit to really push it. The best parts of the mixit are people giving real feedback about what the songs are doing, and the people uploading the songs learning from that. This is something I cannot afford to have die off.

So, a summary:

1. Can we get mixits back here? What do we have to do for that?
2. If we can't, where do we want it?
3. What can we do better once we find a permanent home for it?

What do you think? I really truly want to know.

Your pal,
Leo.