Music Marketing With Mixbit: Anonymous Video Remixing Anyone?
MixBit, a video creation and sharing app from the creators of YouTube, offers both a bit more and a bit less than popular competitors such as Vine and Instagram. Individual clips are still limited in length but can be edited into much longer final products. Videos are posted with the assumption that they may be remixed but creators and remixers are unidentified by accounts and most social features are missing. MixBit seems full of potential but likely to change in the near future as development continues.
MixBit strikes me as a bit rough around the edges but that seems intentional. It has a very clear focus on shooting short clips, editing them, remixing the work of others and sharing the results. Its major limit is the lack of identity and the absence of most social features.
Mixbit is currently available as an iOS app with an Android app said to be on the way.
MixBit's Basic Features Include:
Record, edit and publish videos as short as one second or as long as an hour—right from your mobile phone.
Videos are taken in multiple clips, or “bits,” as long as 16 seconds each. A video can include as many as 256 clips.
Clips are stored as independent elements but play as one seamless video.
Drag and drop to rearrange, cut or delete clips, as well as save or publish, right from your phone.
As you can see from videos on the website, individual clips are displayed below each video and remixes are featured under a tab so marked.
Videos can be created entirely from saved clips uploaded by other members.
The emphasis on easy editing and the potential for content to spread is one of the more appealing elements of MixBit. It's clearly a platform intended for content that can be freely remixed.
MixBit: No ID, No Liking, No Following
For many the primary limitation of MixBit won't be the 16 second clips but the lack of identity. Members don't have identifiable accounts and persistent id is not available through MixBit.
Videos are promoted under Featured and Recent tabs and are embeddable but subscribing to a creator is not a possibility. Nor is commenting or liking.
Some individuals are branding their videos via talking head approaches and self-identification within the video. Recognizable faces become de facto update announcements when appearing in the Recent feed.
Hashtags are available and they're being used for identifying video related to events, such as #bonnaroo or #outsidelands. Hashtags are also being used to identify aspects of the video topic or creator.
Right now MixBit has a bit of momentum due to its founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who co-founded YouTube, and MixBit's new take on a popular activity.
Music Marketing With MixBit?
Usage seems relatively low and that offers an opportunity to be an early adopter if you can develop an identifiable presence without account names and related tools. But I will be very surprised if persistent account names and related social elements aren't eventually introduced.
Given the public nature of anonymous accounts on MixBit, there's some potential for a stealth campaign to gradually introduce distinctive footage that encourages remixing. With the current crop of videos looking a bit boring, it shouldn't be that hard for a creative group or individual to make their presence felt.
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
