by SHANE SINNOTT

Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America, in their ongoing quest to make enemies of just about everyone, shuttered Muxtape, the popular site that allowed users to upload and share digital mixtapes with each other. The motive for the RIAA, presumably, was the possibility that someone, somewhere, for a second, was potentially making money doing something that the RIAA could possibly make money doing.

Rather than find a way to work with and embrace the fact that millions of people were being exposed to new music on the site—the guiding philosophy at Muxtape was to discover something new, not to search for something you want—the association closed the door on yet another opportunity to not look like assholes. A visit to the site (www.muxtape.com) now shows a single page with the message “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA.”

Let’s hope the “problem” gets sorted out soon, and in the meantime, you can try Project Playlist instead (www.playlist.com). This is a newer site that allows you to search for, share, and stream playlists generated from songs appearing all over the web. Think of it like a super search engine with instant playable results, one of those things that will seem really cool for a few months until enough people start using it that the RIAA shuts it down.

TV on the Radio, meanwhile, have a new record coming out on Sept 23, called Dear Science, and the first track, “Golden Age,” is floating around on blogs, and streaming from their website www.tvontheradio.com. It sounds a little more spastic than I was expecting—and certainly faster—but I’ll let you be the judge: you can download an mp3 for iPod listening at tinyurl.com/54vplx.

And finally, here’s a plug for Anne Lagacé Dowson, until recently that familiar voice of CBC’s Radio Noon, in her attempt to win the Sept 8th by-election for Westmount-Ville-Marie. She represents the NDP, the only major party that has a digital affairs critic, and that supports reasonable copyright legislation that takes more parties into account than just the rights holders.