Hey, remember Muxtape? If not, quickly: in its first incarnation, Mixtape was a muxtape service – no, wait, other way round – created by Justin Ouellette that was popular among tech-y bloggers and the Tumblr-sphere.  It got shut down by U.S. record labels before it had a chance to develop a business model but, after going on hiatus, it rose, all phoenix-like, to be a site for bands to preview and promote their work.

Reaction to the Muxtape’s reincarnation was muted at best. Most complained that if offered little in comparison to other sites: there were no bios, no videos, no links; just music. But why am I thinking about Muxtape today?

Well, there was a comment on The Awl yesterday about Lady GaGa that reminded me of my reactions to Muxtape’s rebirth. The connection is a bit circuitous, so bear with me. First, here’s the comment, in response to Alex Balk’s continued bewilderment at Lady GaGa’s entire shtick:

She’s a pop star who seems to be fully aware of the fact that being a pop star right now is all about image and also seems to be fully in control of that image, to the point where almost all we see of her is performance. In an age where you can find a ton of celebrities on Twitter being accessible and human, god help us, she’s an old-fashioned enigmatic famous person. And she’s managed this without becoming a sex symbol (sort of) and while displaying actual singing and songwriting talent.

So, wtf does this have to do with Muxtape? Well, I think Muxtape is the Lady GaGa of music services.

Lady GaGa effaces her ‘own, personal identity’ in order to promote the ‘unreal’ one, sidestepping the need to be ‘authentic’ and ‘real’ by embracing precisely the kind of falsity and image that others resist. This, I would say, characterises not just modern fame, but fame in general. Fame is about the projection of the image-of-a-person into the public space and into our consciousness. It’s about surface, it’s about ideas, it’s about desire – but what it’s not about is ‘an actual person’. It’s about what the image of that person means as a sign within a given cultural context. And once you’re okay with that, pop music is a fucking riot and pretty great.

Muxtape does something similar – but definitely not the same. It effaces image and brand almost entirely in favour of coloured blocks on a screen with text in them (and fine, a logo or photo or something). By maintaining this generally blank, neutral aesthetic, Muxtape, in a way that is far less naive than it sounds, is ‘about the music, man’.

After all, there is no attempt to produce an aura of a band, an image of something that has far more to do with the performance of identity than the performance of the music. To wit, Muxtape’s refusal to create an idea of a band (sorta’, almost) sidesteps the need for bands-as-brands. It’s not that escapes the kind of reductiveness or signifying of branding entirely; that would be too optimistic. But, consciously or not, it makes an effort, and that’s what I still think makes it kinda’ neat.

And so, both Muxtape and Lady GaGa erect a wall between a person or group of people and the representation of that identity in the public space. Lady GaGa embraces that representation to become the image, to her benefit. Muxtape effaces the representation in order to present the music with as little attachment to a culture of branding as possible.