You can read all about it here or on Muxtape’s site, where the founder writes an essay that’s impossible to finish. I’ll give  you the short version – RIAA wins again.

Marvin Gaye – If I Should Die Tonight (via)

A day after Digital Music News reported that RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) top execs earned about $1.5 million a year, VentureBeat reported that RIAA shut down Muxtape (online music mixtapes).  You may remember one of those executives from her days chasing down illegal file sharers, one pesky villain at a time.

The quote from RIAA:

For the past several months, we have communicated our legal concerns with the site and repeatedly tried to work with them to have illegal content taken down. Muxtape was hosting copies of copyrighted sound recordings without authorization from the copyright owners. Making these recordings available for streaming playback also requires authorization from the copyright owners. Muxtape has not obtained authorization from our member companies to host or stream copies of their sound recordings.

Not a good week of news for music technology companies that stream music (see Pandora post).