The Good
The new Hype Machine is brilliant, especially the way the whole page plays like a playlist.
http://hublog.hubmed.org
Anthony’s focusing on the right things and that’s why the new Hype Machine rocks.
I wrote a post recently saying that I don’t like favoriting music. But this is different. This is really bookmarking. It does something really useful.
http://avc.blogs.com/
Congrats to Anthony and his crew for making the best site on these internets even better.
http://www.fangbear.com/
povertyjetset: Hype Machine re-deux is freaking AMAZING!
Twitter update
This is totally sweet. The new Hype Machine kicks ultimate ass and takes many names. Hype Machine shows the open Internet is smarter than any one person, and those that use it as open are those that benefit entirely. Walled gardens SUCK. Please don’t parlay into them.
http://blackrimglasses.com/
The new Hypemachine interface is so approachable, that even the tail end of Generation Y will ‘get it.’
…
Hype Machine is way more historically significant than “In Rainbows.”
http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/
The Bad:
Get your barf bag ready, this one is a clunky monkey to be sure and the new logo is atrocious, kind of like staring at a steaming turd that’s arrived on your plate at a swanky restaurant only to find a giant slice of undigested corn and a toenail sticking out of the gnarled gooey end. Who designs shit like this? Terrible.
http://www.jockohomo.com/datapanik/
New larger type is horrible. Actually, it’s all sort of horrible. Looks like a site aimed at idiot children.
Hype Machine Blog Comment
Now this site is useless. Completely useless. You aren’t my homepage any longer. You aren’t even bookmarked any longer. R.I.P
PS - have to say it again - YOU BLEW IT.
Hype Machine Blog Comment
Then, there are lots of constructive ones, and while those are less fun, they’ve been hugely useful while tuning the new site. Thank you all for the interest!
UPDATE: Carles offers an excellent “best of” list in comments below.
Anthony Volodkin
Taylor McKnight
Zoya Feldman
Scott Kidder
John Schimmel
I still hate it, I especially hate the Herb Alpert inspired logo, but I’m giving it a chance and I’m beginning to see a few things I like and less I don’t like. Can I change my turd comment to read steaming corndog, the undigested corn part to lint and toenail to hair? I retract the shit comment and yes, I’m seriously backtracking on the word terrible.
October 23, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
nah man, that’s staying as the most pathetic extended metaphor in blogger history. and that’s saying a lot.
October 23, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
shh, no fighting!
October 23, 2007 @ 9:56 pm
Herb Alpert inspires each of my Gin & Tonics. Go Herb!
October 23, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
If Herb Alpert was an mp3 aggregator, I think Hype Machine is what he’d look like.
October 24, 2007 @ 2:04 am
CARLES’s best of HypeMachine blog comments:
“GODDAMIT i’m still really pissed about the huge fucking type. WHY DID I EVER DONATE MONEY TO YOU. Fuuuuck i want old hype baaaack.”
-Some Yuppie who is angry that every1 found out about HypeM
‘Lame. Looks great new player doesn’t seem to play very well and the lack of popup player has got me on imeem. sorry.’
-some dude who loves imeem and myspace
“R.I.P., hypem player, I won’t visit here much til I hear you’ve been resurrected. Do I need to start a petition?”
-some girl who wants to start a petition
‘It seems to me you’ve sacrificed user convenience to try and make users click around on the website, in the hopes of driving up both your page views for more ad revenue (i.e. make it a “sticky” website) and your referrals to other blogs (to keep the blogs happy and participating). It’s too bad.’
-a marketing major at a top 50 business school in America
‘They Hypemachine sux anyways’
-a blogger that gets 3K+ hits per day
‘If i knew code you bet your ass i would waste a day of work making that and replicating what you did. you had a semi perfect product which was brought to users from a person with like minded needs. Now your needs have changed but the mass has not and you have alienated your users. I’m sure that slowly your uniques will go up and people will come on board because that is what happens with social networks, but this was not a social network. I work in online advertisng and have to deal with tons and tons of sites who care more about their CPMs, Unique Users and comscore number and less about their content. this was not that kind of site, until last week…content is king’
-some guy who ‘works in online advertisng, and has to deal with tons and tons of sites who care more about CPMs, Unique Users and comscore number and less about their content.’
‘You’ve been removed as my homepage. Good luck with this new direction.’
-some guy with Perez Hilton as his homepage
‘ I’ve been using HypeM for nearly three years. If you don’t do something to restore functionality in three days, you’ll lose me and, I’ll wager, an uncomfortable chunk of your former loyal followers, more than your buddies in advertising will want to accomodate. Don’t get greedy.’
-some girl who got a copy of HypeMachine’s financial statements
“Now this site is useless. Completely useless. You aren’t my homepage any longer. You aren’t even bookmarked any longer. R.I.P PS - have to say it again - YOU BLEW IT.’
-Some guy to Michael Dell
“Why can’t we just trust the people making the decisions to know what’s best for us?”
-Mark Zuckerberg and George W. Bush and the President of Iran
‘I am from India(Bangalore). I was one of the oldest visitors to your site (even before the site had ads on it..or you got media coverage..before you were digged, metafiltered or reddit’d, or even before you got this new fancy url..remember the hyphenated url?).’
-some guy who works for DELL support in Bangalore, and is referring to ASK-JEEVES.com
‘When I want to read blog summaries I use elbo.ws, I like their layout as far as that goes better than the new hype.’
-an intern for Elbo.ws who is required to check HypeMachine everyday
‘You have pretty much eliminated any reason for me to visit anymore.’
-some guy about pets.com
‘I won’t be using the site until the situation is remedied.’
-a commenter on NYtimes.com before it was free
‘If you are under NO COMMERCIAL PRESSURE, just put the flash player back. If you ARE, JUST STATE IT CLEARLY on your home page.’
-some dude who wants to play HARDBALL with hypemachine
October 24, 2007 @ 2:12 am
Haaaaaz.
October 24, 2007 @ 2:18 am
I like it!
Carles I love you.
October 24, 2007 @ 3:15 am
hype machine: encouraging sycophants and discouraging criticism since it totally jumped the shark with its shitty new design and lack of functionality for anyone besides lame blog nerds. quick poll do the hypem guys hover on their alexa ratings more than they work on programming???
October 24, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
so salty.
October 24, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
hilarious alexa ratings reference.
October 25, 2007 @ 6:06 am
Thanks for the shout out! I do love what you guys are making here. Fantastic stuff!
October 25, 2007 @ 8:58 am
Well, it would be nice if letters like é, á and such would show up in the listings …
October 25, 2007 @ 9:39 am
Wait. So instead of continuing to work on the site to try to address concerns like continuous play or adding volume adjustment, you guys have been making lists of the best (for better or worse) comments?
October 25, 2007 @ 10:28 am
ok, but you know what’s even more outrageous? we’ve also been eating, sleeping, and going to shows!
October 25, 2007 @ 11:30 am
You should be ashamed of yourself zoya. Can’t you see this is serious business!! I demand this site be shut down until every feature has been calibrated to my exact specifications. Also, I declare everyone that owns or reads any blog to be a lame nerd (except, of course, myself). I am posting this comment against the advice of my psychiatrist, who has suggested that perhaps my obsession with Hype Machine’s new layout could possibly be a manifestation of a more deeply rooted psychological dysfunction.
October 25, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
You know what I think? Nothing. This guy does though.
Denis Diderot
When science, art, literature, and music are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man’s name live for thousands of years.
October 25, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
I have to agree with the negative comments. The old look contained much more information per page. Also, the “popular” songs and popular blog lists were much easier to read (and longer).
Plus, it’s not picking up more than four or five mp3s per post. What a drag. I’ve noticed that my traffic referred by hype machine has dropped tremendously. I don’t know if it is because it’s not picking up my mp3s or if it is because fewer people are reading hype machine.
October 26, 2007 @ 1:32 pm
The page layout has been adjusted not to give bloggers that post large posts with many tracks an advantage.
We are looking into the the other issues you mentioned.
October 26, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
Antony…all well and good not to reward the most promiscuous mp3 bloggers…
but now you reward the most prolific blogger… those who merely post most 3 tracks most frequently
the information in your new layout is basically less, which is not more in comparison…
if this is somehow getting tyhe law off yer back, or making you guys more money
just say it…
as it stands…it’s definitely not what it was
and we all move on…some more slowly than others
October 26, 2007 @ 11:25 pm
i still visit this site on a semi-continual basis. only to see if you have relented to the voice of reason and brought back the good version of this site.
October 27, 2007 @ 7:32 am
I have been using the new site for a few days, and and I don’t care what anybody says, it’s improved. I like the pictures, I love being able to play the songs individually, and I have always enjoyed the color green. Thanks!
October 27, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
Nice try - but a failure in the HUGE kindergarden graphics -
need a flash player that contains long playlist and is abel to play them ..
sometimes I wait wait and wait and fucking take a shit on the other side of the stars before it have loaded - find another trick to pull pageviews,
I dont hype HYPEM to my friends anymore !!!
October 27, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
otherwise you guys do a fantastic job !!!
October 27, 2007 @ 5:17 pm
Who cares how it looks if the content remains the same and ever-growing? Jesus, only a bunch of neon-sunglass-wearing-hipster-wannabes would be bitching about this site’s design, it’s a gift to us all, shut up and enjoy it.
October 28, 2007 @ 4:00 am
I like everything pretty much except for the lack of .M3U files for the popular page. Can’t listen in my own media player so there’s not much incentive to bother.
October 28, 2007 @ 9:31 am
guys… why i can’t listen hype from foxytunes.com like few days ago before you change the hype machine.
every time I try to listen music on hype machine the pop up never show the list.
what’s wrong guys..???
October 29, 2007 @ 4:11 am
I still prefer the old Popup Player to the new one. It was much easier to navigate through songs and the fact that a bulk of them were displayed rather than one at a time was more useful. There’s something to be said about simplicity.
Also, the layout and functions remind me of Project Playlist. That being said, this is still one of the best resources on the Internet for discovering new music.
October 30, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
Constructive criticism is useful, but just stop BITCHING! You aren’t paying for shit, so the entitled attitude is pretty ridiculous.
October 30, 2007 @ 11:35 pm
Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back the PODCAST capabilities! (or show me where they are)
October 30, 2007 @ 11:37 pm
It would be nice if the flash player didnt stop at the last track on the page but instead kept going through all the tracks. Heres my experience:
I go to dashboard start my popup player and listen. Then it stops once it finishes the last track on that page. I then have to close it, go to the bottom of the page and click for the next page. Then the next page starts again at the beginning of the list so I have to scroll down and find where it left off and relaunch the player. It then stops again at the bottom and so on. If i end up skipping a lot of tracks i dont want to hear I can reach these stop points quite quickly.
I have to say its pretty annoying and I find that after I listen to the first page I end up just closing the player and listening to a different music source. Anyone else feel the same or am I missing something?
October 31, 2007 @ 11:45 am
I would really like the ability to put a podcast feed of my hearted tracks in my itunes. I am able to do it with the most popular tracks but not the tracks in my dashboard.
Also I am running OS X 10.5 with Safari 3 and I was not able to sign up for dashboard, I kept getting an error. I ended up having to use a friends windows computer with firefox and I was able to successfully sign up for your site.
You have a great site, thank you.
October 31, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
The site is still not hitting the right spot, but I do like the play buttons next to the blog spot, that’s easy.
Also, please feel free to bitch, if no one ever bitched about free things, the library would never have the books people want in it.
November 1, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
i still love your site, but could you put the date and time back up so that i know when the songs were posted? it would make scrolling through a *lot* easier than trying to figure out which was the last song you saw.
November 3, 2007 @ 6:10 pm
i duno. i kinda prefer the old one better, however, this is more colorful and it still carries out its function…
anyway is there anyway you could make that play button slightly bigger?
November 4, 2007 @ 1:28 pm
I’m listening to less new music now. I’m buying less new music. I’m recommending less new music to friends. I used to live on this site, and now…I wander in, try it for half an hour or so, and wander away, with nothing new for the shopping list.
I don’t know why you did it, maybe you had good reasons, but the utility of the site has dropped to near zero for me. It’s really a heartbreaker.
November 4, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
I can’t really fathom why everyone is going batshit crazy about the graphics.
‘Oh noes! thur’s a giant hart! I CAN NO LONGER SEARCH FOR THE MUSIC OR BLOGS I DESIRE DUE TO THIS OBTRUSIVE AND AESTHETICALLY UNPLEASANT GRAPHIC!’
November 5, 2007 @ 11:53 am
I was going to write a long comment but I agree word for word with Len.
November 6, 2007 @ 9:40 am
The pop-up player is not working. When I go to a song in the love feed and click the pop-up player button next to it, a completely different song plays.
Also, thanks for the response to my earlier post. I understand there were problems getting the player to play all the music in the feeds without having to close it and manually move to the next page and start again but I assume (hope) this is something being worked on and will be changed in the future??
In my opinion a key aspect of this site’s utility is to flip through long lists of songs pretty rapidly. There is no one blog that can really hit my tastes perfectly (in fact none even hit 50%) so there are often many songs that i’m just not interested in. I want to be able to move quickly and easily through lots of music in lots of different blogs to find what i’m looking for. Its not working that way with the status quo and I find I lose interest quickly. Just my opinion….
November 6, 2007 @ 10:18 am
A useful site going through growing pains. I found some great music on here. It will come together.
Best to all
November 7, 2007 @ 2:51 pm
At first I was a little bothered by the new site, but after making good use of it…I dig it!
November 9, 2007 @ 10:57 am
At first I was digging the site but after it became useless I stopped bothering.
November 9, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
wheres the standalone player gone???? Thats all i have to say, without that the sites nothing
November 11, 2007 @ 10:31 am
I dig on all the new stuff like user names and loved blogs, that actually helps me. instead of looking for the blog name in the list everyday.
i just miss the convienence of the flash player, it made surfing through the website so much easier and it worked better. the new one changes songs if it has to buffer more than once, which is damn annoying(that could just be my connection, but it shoulndt change). Also why the huge print? and all the extra blog readings under it? its about the music, not the post. whatevs.
all in all it works for me. it sill works, not as great, but it still works. some people are just over dramatising the shit.
November 12, 2007 @ 5:47 am
I think it is all fine, except for one thing. . . Why no more podcast subscriptions??? I LOVED that feature!
November 14, 2007 @ 12:57 pm
Get the standalone player option back or just get the good fucking website bk!!!!!!!!!
November 17, 2007 @ 4:31 pm
fuck, i hate the new HM. FUCK. bring back the old one. i cant even stand to visit this site anymore. just took it off my bookmarks.
November 26, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
Oh how we love you.
November 26, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
I think we need to be honest with ourselves here.
Okay, so it’s much harder to come in once or twice a day, slam through huge chunks of music, and end up with more.
But I think the design/interface/stuff-ness makes it easier to listen to fragments here, which means more sampling (for me). I think that’s a fair trade-off for less grabbing.
And I appreciate the attempt to level the blogger playing field — and I say that as someone who posts less often, with more songs, so the current site disadvantages me in order to level that field.
I wish the font were smaller — so I could see more at one time, and more on one screen without scrolling all over. But that’s a tweak, not a true critique. I’m not, like, wheeeee-happy, and I’m not sure it’s better, but it’s different in a valuable way.
I’m looking forward to version 3.0, though. In a few years. When we’ve grown to love this, so we can hate that, whatever it is.
November 30, 2007 @ 12:54 am
Bummer that you guys took out the podcast subscribe feature. I guess it’s understandable if you’re trying to crank up the ad revenue and keep people at your site clicking on more ads. Too bad you had to sell out, makes the new vibe kinda weak.
December 18, 2007 @ 3:30 am