Machine Shop: The Hype Machine Team Blog

Since the fall of 2010, we’ve been running album premieres on The Hype Machine almost every week, so I wanted to share all the mysteries about how they work.

They are rather simple: one week before the album’s release, it is streamed in its entirety on the site, and we tell the whole world. We do this via Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and by featuring it in multiple places within the site (link in sidebar of all pages [6M pv/week], and on the artist search page). These premieres are usually embeddable, so you can easily share them – while some sites demand to be the exclusive streaming destination in order to give a new record attention, we know that’s not how the Internet works. The goal behind these is to have as many people find out about the upcoming release as possible.

Here’s what an embedded player looks like:

Typically, these albums are streamed via our partner SoundCloud, which provides the excellent shareable player that we’ve customized (it works on an iPad via HTML5!). But technology is no barrier, as long as we get a working streaming player, we are happy to work with other solutions as well.

We don’t get paid for running these features; they are just artists whose work we enjoy. Here is the eclectic list of the albums we’ve premiered so far. You should check out all of them, they are interesting:

9/7/2010 Royksopp – Senior

10/05/2010 Hauschka – Foreign Landscapes

10/19/2010 Warpaint – The Fool

01/18/2011 Destroyer – Kaputt

01/18/2011 The Go! Team – Rolling Blackouts

02/01/2011 The Streets –  Computers & Blues

02/08/2011 The Dears – Degeneration Street

02/15/2011 Banjo or Freakout – Banjo or Freakout

02/22/2011 Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes

03/03/2011 Dodos – No Color

03/08/2011 Oh Land! – Oh Land!

03/08/2011 Acid House Kinds – Music Sounds Better with You

03/15/2011 Cornershop - Cornershop & The Double ‘O’ Groove Of

03/22/2011 Yelle – Safari Disco Club

04/05/2011 Holy Ghost! – Holy Ghost!

04/08/2011 Crystal Stilts – In Love with Oblivion

04/11/2011 Guillemots – Walk The River

05/02/2011 Other Lives – Tamer Animals

05/09/2011 Friendly Fires – PALA

05/16/2011 Planningtorock – W

05/23/2011 The Wooden Birds – Two Matchsticks

06/01/2011 Tom Vek – Leisure Seizure

06/07/2011 Junior Boys – It’s All True

06/12/2011 Com Truise – Galactic Melt

06/27/2011 SBTRKT – SBTRKT

07/04/2011 Big Spider’s Back – Memory Man

07/11/2011 Mount Kimbie – Carbonated EP

07/18/2011 Machinedrum – Room(s)

07/25/2011 Azari & III – Azari & III

08/01/2011 Pepper Rabbit – Red Velvet  Snow Ball

08/08/2011 Blood Orange – Coastal Grooves

08/15/2011 Active Child – You Are All I See

08/22/2011 Thundercat – The Golden Age of Apocalypse

08/29/2011 Balam Acab – Wander/Wonder

09/06/2011 Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost

09/12/2011 Tropics – Parodia Flare

09/19/2011 Dominant Legs – Invitation

09/26/2011 DRC Music - Kinshasa One Two

10/03/2011 Radiohead - TKOL RMX 1234567

10/10/2011 Nils Frahm – Felt

10/17/2011 Gringo Starr - Count Yer Lucky Stars

10/24/2011 Vanaprasta - Healthy Geometry

10/31/2011 King Midas Sound – Without You

11/7/2011 Korallreven – An Album

11/14/2011 Sepalcure - Sepalcure

11/21/2011 ITAL TEK – Gonga

11/28/2011 Korn – The Path of Totality

11/28/2011 Fred Falke – Part IV

If you are working with an artist on an interesting record, do get in touch with us.