Innovative music startup Muxtape has announced that its future lies in HTML5. “I’m done with Flash,” developer Justin Ouellette wrote this morning. Though a much smaller company, Muxtape’s embrace of HTML5 is particularly notable as it happened on the same day that video portal Hulu said it was not going to support the new format any time soon.
“HTML5 is great and does not require Steve Jobs’ permission to run a competing music market,” Muxtape wrote on its company blog. “Running in Mobile Safari has other advantages, too,” says Ouellette. “Since it’s privileged by Apple to run in the background, you can listen to music and use pretty much any other app simultaneously. For now this is only possible with HTML5.”
“HTML5 is great and does not require Steve Jobs’ permission to run a competing music market.”…”Since it’s privileged by Apple to run in the background, you can listen to music and use pretty much any other app simultaneously. For now this is only possible with HTML5.”
Muxtape made its splash as a wonderfully simple music player website for user generated playlists. After a short period of
, the company announced that
due to music copyright pressure. Months later it
as “a platform for bands.”
The HTML5/Flash conflict has been watched closely all around the world because of the desirability of multimedia on Apple systems. Hulu, for example, cannot be viewed on the iPad because the company does not support HTML5 yet. Hulu VP of product Eugene Wei wrote this morning that HTML5 isn’t ready for prime-time yet. HTML5 lacks maturity in reporting, advertising and content security, Wei argued. Those are concerns that many companies are liable to share.
As an independent and formerly legally questionable music outlet, Muxtape is very different from the mega-corporate premium content channel Hulu. Muxtape has presumably always placed less priority on things like reporting, advertising and content security. A demo HTML5 site has been set up by Muxtape at itllbebetter.com.
