International Mixtape 2.0 Ideas

I love the International Mixtape Project (internationalmixtapeproject.com). It’s a community that does mix exchanges monthly all over the world. I have made and received mixes for/from music lovers from all over the world.

I have no complaints (except when I don’t get a mix), but as a web developer I feel like the site could be even more captivating; thus making the site more popular, then giving me the chance to get mixes from more people! Here are some of my ideas, please comment up on suggestions of your own. Who knows, maybe Ryan Mixtape will see these and implement some of these for IMP 2.0!

Front Page / Overall site
– I would like to see a random blog on the front page; title and blurb. I may be biased since I think I’m the most blogged user.

– Updated design – something less grey and boxy. I think curb-appeal will bring users.

– RSS Feeds for articles, blogs, mixes by user and other site content. This will give users ability to know when there is new content without visiting the site

Profile Pages
– Counter on blogs
– Comments on blogs
– Layout Profile different: show last 10 comments, last 5 mixes, last 5 blog titles with READ MORE links. Pagination will make profile pages not so long
– Sort blog titles by id number, not most recently updated
– Allow HTML markup like bullets, bold, emphasis and line breaks in the blog
– Allow people to enter their usernames for other online services such as last.fm to show that feed on their profile
– Allow Imeem players to be embedded so users can share their mixes electronically, even if just 30 second previews.
– Add a new section for Artist / Album / Song / Concert reviews

Users
These ideas get a little more out-there

– Two classes of user; n00bs and leet depending on rating. Your rating is based on reviews (like the very effective star rating on Ebay). Marks will be for mix-ratings by your listeners, how many mixes you’ve rated, getting your mixes in on time, etc. When you get an elite status you start getting mixes from other elites – that way the losers who never send in mixes get mixes from other lamers.

– If there was an even more elite class maybe those super users get two mixes… ooooh.

– I love the points / badges system on thesixtyone.com – it creates real incentive / return appeal. I wish the points did something, like I could redeem free MP3s or something… that would require some nifty sponsors

– Neat Fightclubbish homework like “make/send a mix to the president”, “promote an indie band with public disc-drops” etc

– Allow users to pick default genres and have mix matches based on this. This could draw in people who hate genre X and only want Y (maybe then subdomain some sites like classical.internationalmixtape.com)

– Make the User Profiles page sortable, not random. Makes finding users by name hard. I would love if each person on the Users Page showed how many mixes they’ve made, their rating and how long they’ve been with IMP.

– Having a unique username on sign-up could solve the trouble of finding people who have mixed for you.

Sponsors
– Sponsors with giveaways would be sweet. This might mean that there should be some decent info gathering like related music surveys and other fun data farming. Maybe something like “Would you put this song on a mix?” with an audio player. Rating songs would be fun too.

Statistics
– What’s Being Mixed – a sortable list of music on peoples mixes. Sort by name, song, album. Then you could see what the most mixed song of the month/year is. How many times did Young Folks get mixed anyways?

– Who’s Mixing? – offer a few thousand free IMP memberships to notables like artists of various genres. This will build cred, maybe get some name-drops in mags and likely incite the sign-up of the artists fans.

Contests and Interaction
– It would be so rewarding if there were rip-off Emmys every year for the best mixes. Categories could include by Genre, Theme, International, Artwork etc. Announce judging categories and have people submit nominations. Fun!

Those are my ideas. What are yours? This post will be on my IMP Profile, my personal site arleym.com and the IMP Facebook Group.

Categorized in: Music

This post was written by ArleyM