by SHANE SINNOTT

Web sites that let you listen to music for free seem to be having shorter lifespans these days. Copyright holders have become savvier at sussing out search sites and the like that let you stream music. That said, there sure ain’t a shortage of them, and it seems that for every one that goes down, another one quickly takes its place. Muxtape, though, the site that first let you create online mixtapes and share them with your friends, and which was shut down last fall after a bazillion people started using it, is an exception. Its closing has sparked an entire wave of sites hellbent on allowing you to treat the Internet like a worldwide jukebox. The best might be Favtape (favtape.com), which accurately bills itself as “the easiest way to play music online.” By now you know the drill—go to the site, play anything you want and create a free account if you want to save your playlists. Favtape, like similar sites, works by basically being a really good “live” search engine for MP3s on music blogs, saving you the hassle of actually going to the sites in your search results to stream the songs. It makes a blog search engine like Hype Machine (hypem.com) seem like something from the Stone Age. The downside is that Favtape isn’t really doing anything original. The site relies on the amazing

Seeqpod (seeqpod.com) to execute its searches, which filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago due to a whack of major-label lawsuits, so who knows how long it’s going to last. For now though, it remains one of those Internet phenomena that would have blown your mind 10 years ago—your computer being able to play almost any song you can think of, free.

And quickly, by the time you read this, the Breeders will have (self) released their new EP, Fate to Fatal, and you can download the title track, which was recorded during a tour break in London, at tinyurl.com/d3xwar. For what it’s worth, the EP also has a cover of Bob Marley’s “Chances Are.”