The Hype Machine

2008 PLUG Awards in NYC

The 2008 PLUG Awards in NYC by Stalman

We were nominated for the Best Website at the 2008 PLUG Awards earlier this month. Anthony attended the awards ceremony, sadly not wearing a cat-suit, and said it was good times. We lost to a very worthy competitor that some of you may have heard of and that I still love dearly: Pitchfork Media (anyone else excited about Pitchfork.TV!?)

It was also reassuring that their music awards, like best album, artist, live show etc were very reminescent of our recent Music Blog Zeitgeist.

SXSW 2008 in Austin, Texas
SXSW was incredible. Spending so much time around people that actually create and design things we use and love (and things we didn’t know existed!) was very inspiring.

It doesn’t do it justice, but here are is a short sampling of some of our experiences:

Scott Perry (New Music Tipsheet), Anthony, Rachel (from KCRW), and Taylor at the FADER Fort

Tantek, Hannah and Matt (from Last.FM), Anthony

Scott and Alexis Ohanian (from Reddit) at Gawker Media’s Party

The PureVolume Ranch (aka our home from 12am-4am every night for 10 days)

Graveyard, a rock band from Sweden was my favorite performance of the week. Listen on HypeM

The most web-cred crowd ever at the Emmy The Great Show. Seen in the crowd: Anthony, Taylor, Scott, Robert (from Donewaiting), Frank (from Chromewaves), Matt, Hannah, Jonas and Jeff (Last.FM), and Chirag (from Sched.org/Chime.TV)

Teaser: Look for actual awesome new features later this week