The Hype Machine Music Blog Zeitgeist 2011 is ALIVE! We will be revealing 10 of the year’s Top 50 artists and albums every day, with fresh mixes of the Top 50 tracks. Stick around till Monday to find out who made it to the Top 10.
Here’s how this Zeitgeist was created:
Top 50 Artists: We calculated the total number of songs by each band posted in 2011 by blogs listed on the Hype Machine. Nicholas Gurewitch (The Perry Bible Fellowship) illustrated this musical landscape as a big, beautiful poster, and we added interactive map navigation for easy scrolling. Drag around, zoom all the way in, and click artist names to hear tracks by the 50 most-blogged artists of 2011. You can buy the full 18×24″ print here.
Top 50 Albums: We processed more than 400 blogger Top 10 lists and weighed each album according to position for our final list of 50. The maps displayed with each album continue to map the music of 2011.
Some great cartographic resources: Library of Congress Map Division, Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at UT Austin, MAPCO
Top 50 Songs: We continued to collaborate with some of the year’s top producers on custom Hype Machine mixes featuring the top tracks of 2011. The full list will be published on Monday.
Thank you, bloggers, for another great year of music discovery. Big thanks to Jeff from Heart On A Stick for starting the Zeitgeist tradition; David from Largehearted Boy for collecting the lists; Cameron, Matt, and Katie for entering the album data; and the entire Hype Machine team for accepting that no one sleeps until the Zeitgeist is live. And thank you, for knowing that there’s always more music out there, and wanting to find it.
Any reason why most of the albums only have 30 second bits of audio? Do we have to buy to listen to the whole album? If so, why not just link to a store directly rather than tease us with Rdio? Curious.
January 5, 2012 7:04 pm
If you have a free rdio account, you can play the whole thing.
January 5, 2012 7:06 pm
Where are the track listings for the five “Zeitgeist 2011 Top Tracks Mixes” mentioned above and available at http://hypem.com/zeitgeist/2011/songs?
I can’t find track listings for these mixes on that page or anywhere else on Hype Machine site. Are they still to be added, or am I missing something?
I did manage to find a track listing for the first mix, by RAC, on RAC’s own blog:
http://rac.tumblr.com/post/15104657638/hype-machine-asked-us-to-take-their-top-50-tracks
January 8, 2012 6:48 pm
Interesting list so far, I’m loving the albums a lot. When are 1-10 going to be posted? I’m really eager to hear them. Thanks and keep up the awesome work, you do a really great job.
D
January 8, 2012 11:36 pm
The slow unveiling, and having to skip through the same albums each day, is annoying.
January 8, 2012 11:49 pm
Will the list of top 50 songs be released today?
January 9, 2012 5:37 pm
Hey, turns out at least some of the mixes have track listings in the comments on their soundcloud page. Dunno if they all do.
January 9, 2012 11:48 pm
So, the first 4 mixes were included in the Hype Machine Radio Show podcast feed. Will mixes 5 & 6 (by White Panda and Little Dragon respectively) be put into the podcast feed as well?
January 11, 2012 3:42 am
Where is the list of ‘403’ Blogs?
How were they chosen?
January 15, 2012 8:54 pm
this is all great! I love The Perry Bible Fellowship! I haven’t listenned to the mixes yet I want to browse through the top50 first. Is there a way of getting them in mp3? (since I can’t play it on my iTouch). Or is there a way of buying the whole thing? (Instead of looking on iTunes for each music).
Thank-you Hypem =)!
January 26, 2012 10:28 pm
If anyone from HypeM see’s this I would still like to see the list of 403 blogs. Is there a link to it?
February 19, 2012 10:01 pm