Thanks for everyone’s comments in the preceding post. We’ve been reading and discussing them plenty, stay tuned.
While we tweak the current site, here is:
What’s New in this version of Hype Machine
– Favorite anything on the site. Tracks, blogs, searches or other users. Just click on the hearts where they appear and they will immediately be added to your dashboard page.
– Dashboard page (looks like http://hypem.com/yourusername, here’s mine, Taylor’s, Scott’s and Zoya’s): shows your favorite tracks, and blogs, searches, people you are watching and who is watching you. You can also share this page with your friends – give them the URL and they can see what you’ve been enjoying on the site.
– Love feed: a customized feed assembled from your favorite blogs, searches, and favorites of people you’ve found interesting on the site.
– Twitter integration: as you favorite anything on the site, you can share this with the world via Twitter. You can see what it looks like here: http://twitter.com/sights_set
– Built-in Video Search: See relevant video right in any search page, powered by Chime.tv
– DRM-Free Music Store Search: as you search the site, we search a long list of digital music stores that carry MP3s or DRM-Free AAC files. Then you can see what we found right on top of the page. (Note: we are currently adjusting this feature to include more services and operate faster)
– In-page audio player: you can preview any track that has the familiar play triangle next to a heart. The track plays while you are on that page.
What’s NOT new
With the new look and all these tools, many things also stayed the same.
– We keep track of the best music blogs on the web. Still doing that, and now we expose even more context for all the amazing content we find. After all, the reason any music matters on the Hype Machine is because writers around the world have found it fascinating enough to write about.
– Live Internet radio powered by music blogs. We assemble the most popular, interesting tracks being blogged around the world into one eclectic radio stream.
– Instant search: As you are exploring the universe of music blogs, you can quickly see all activity around any band that comes to mind.
Thanks again for all your feedback, and welcome to the new Hype Machine.
I guess all good things DO come to an end. I can’t see myself visiting this site now that the flash player is gone.
October 17, 2007 2:22 pm
and tracks still play like a playlist – on the front page, in search results, on blog pages, and in your love feed. click on a track you want to hear, and the next one in the list will play automatically after the first one ends
October 17, 2007 2:42 pm
For me, tracks only continue to play if the page is on top and active, which i dont know if it’s a bug, or a ‘feature’
October 17, 2007 2:49 pm
when are they going to put the stand alone players again…does anyone know?
October 17, 2007 2:51 pm
does anyone know of a better website?
October 17, 2007 2:54 pm
so it is some new hip-web-2.0-myspace-last.fm-thing?
why can’t the good things just stay the way the are? i will never understand that.
i’ll try to get familiar with it but it wont be a pleasure.
October 17, 2007 2:59 pm
guys at Hype Machine – why don’t you just be more transparent with your users? Either you can’t have the flash player for legal reasons, or you’re choosing to ignore our comments. I think you’ll get a lot more sympathy (and continued usage) if you tell us. This is pretty bad consumer communication. You guys need a marketing/PR person 🙂
October 17, 2007 3:01 pm
yknow, we haven’t explained ourselves about the player, you are correct. Check back in a bit.
October 17, 2007 3:03 pm
Man, I’m really unhappy about the lack of the flash player and RSS feed for tracks. Those features were the only thing keeping me coming to this site. I think my use of this site will significantly decrease as a result of this overhaul. And I also agree with the above poster – if the disappearance of the flash player is for legal reasons, just say so – I think the users would definitely understand.
October 17, 2007 3:50 pm
Just read the flash player update. I guess I’m still a little unclear on the change. Apparently the flash player was not accomplishing the task this site is meant to promote: to expose new music to new listeners. But I felt the flash player really did expose me to a far greater array of music than I would otherwise have found. I am not going to click through tracks one at a time and listen to them all the way through. Instead, I liked turning on the player and listening while I did other work. When I found something I really liked, I’d see who the artist was and usually go to itunes or amoeba to buy the album. I just don’t have enough time to be slogging through tracks one at a time. Again, if there are liability concerns on the horizon, I can understand that; I’m not really clear on what liability you are harnessing by linking to other sites (probably a lot, according to the RIAA). But if this isn’t about the law, then I vote for a return to the classic hypemachine that we all know and love (which I think was one of the best websites ever created and has really added a lot to my life).
October 17, 2007 4:00 pm
Matt – If you don’t believe what we write when it’s not what you expect to see, there is little I can do communicate. Thanks for your feedback either way.
October 17, 2007 4:11 pm
Thanks for the response.
It’s not that I don’t believe it; it’s just that it doesn’t add up for me. But hopefully I’m not the average user.
October 17, 2007 10:24 pm
Guys – I see you’re getting a lot of negative feedback on the redesign. I’m not crazy about it myself, but when does anyone ever like redesigns of anything? We’ll get used to it.
That said, I just wanted to thank you for doing it at all. I have discovered (and bought! and bought!) a ton of great new music through the site, and I’m sincerely grateful to you. I hope the redesign works out.
October 18, 2007 12:13 am
this site should get more love.
I LOVE the redesign, the options, everything.
thank you.
October 18, 2007 7:35 am
How come the aggregator isnt listing all the artists that are being posted? It’s only showing the first three artists. You have to visit the blog in order to see the other artists posted. I’m still on dial-up and this is a killer for me. Maybe you could run a “Hype Machine Classic” concurrent with the new site. It was much more user friendly than this. Thanks for listening.
October 18, 2007 9:07 am
I would be happier if it were clear that all songs on a page will play in order. Right now it looks like you have to play each song individually i.e. you must click on each song you want to hear.
October 18, 2007 10:28 am
loved the old hype-machine. found a lot of new music there.
love the new site even better, love that I get to store my faves here and share them, even love the green header and heart thing you’ve got going on!
thanks for the work.
October 18, 2007 10:33 am
How am i able to “heart” favorite items if it’s such a pain in the ass to find music in the first place? You guys added all these unnecessary features and took away the basic functionality. I buy a lot of music, and I used to use this site to find music, and it used to work. I guess you guys got rid of the flash player because it wasn’t giving you enough click throughs, eh? Lame. I want the old hype. New hype equals big disappointment.
October 18, 2007 11:22 am
What have you done to our lovely hype machine? Tacky. The flash player needs to come back.
October 18, 2007 2:32 pm
I don’t find anything on the new site that I like better than the old now that the flashplayer is gone. Much more difficult for me to find new music than it was before. I just don’t get it. Maybe I am simply too old to understand all of these new, hip features you have added.
October 18, 2007 2:49 pm
I used to enjoy putting the flash player on, and then surfing around the rest of the site and found the site very sticky when used in this way. Now it’s all stop and start…just like so many other sites out there… why?
I used to listen all day and night at work and home, but now our usage has declined 100% – I don’t want to keep going back to that page on the computer to fiddle around with it..
….bottom line is I think you’re going to lose a lot of people unless you sort this issue out. I used to personally recommend this site to others, on the basis of the cool flash player, but while it stays like this I’m afraid I won’t be doing any recommending..
why can’t you do something like Yahoo mail, and push the new option, while letting users who want it have access to view and use the older version of the player….(make it less obvious to find on the site, but available to those who want it!)
October 19, 2007 1:43 am
[…] musical online: Songza. No mesmo estilo do HypeM (mas sem estas funções de rede social ganhas depois da reformulação), com uma ótima vantagem: ao invés de listar os vídeos do YouTube, o Songza extrai e toca apenas […]
November 27, 2007 7:32 am
Why can’t I preview tracks past the first few pages
There seems to be problems with tracks that are older than a month or so, even if the link is still active on the site or the blog’s preview still functions. Before the changes, you could mostly preview all tracks going back two years or so.
February 22, 2010 9:20 pm