The Hype Machine

We’ve recently made some changes to the popular page so that it reflects the number of people who’ve favorited the track in the past three days.

Shortly after we made the change, we were alerted by the Sweet Touch blog about an artist (or their team) potentially abusing the charts.  We then started reviewing account activity across the entire site and were able to confirm this and find other bands and blogs engaging in similar activity.

We found several artists and blogs creating fake accounts on the site and favoriting their tracks to get higher visibility in the charts. Because we’ve only recently switched to a chart based on the number of favorites, their efforts were not fruitful, however.  We’ve locked the accounts we detected as fraudulent and suspended tracking blogs we’ve detected contributing to this.

We’ve also taken some extra measures to prevent this in the future. New users on the Hype Machine now have to enter a Captcha, to rule out automated signups, and we monitor the account creation process more closely to detect manual efforts to create fake accounts, too.  As yet another precaution, when creating the Popular charts on the site, we only count the favorites by accounts older than a few days, so that a new wave of manipulative accounts cannot influence the page even if they get past our other checks. We are excited to share these enhancements with you.

Some of these techniques are used by sites like IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes so they’ve stood the test of time.  If you have more feedback on how to make them better, feel free to write using our contact form.  The integrity of what ends up on the Hype Machine is paramount, so we welcome more ideas and constructive criticism.

Finally, here is a list of artists (in alphabetical order) who (or their managers, promoters, interns, determined fans, there is no way to ultimately know) we believe have attempted to manipulate the charts on the Hype Machine. We thought we’d publish this list to let everyone make their own judgments about quality, integrity and marketing strategies:

607
Alexander Technique / Princess Superstar
Audiofun
Big Dope P
Burns
Caroline Reese
Death to the Throne
Decimals
Destructo
Disco Ruido
Emil & Friends
Flapsandwich
fragglerock
Foulhouse
Gareth Pearson
Girl Problems
Hot Knives
John Roman
Kid Legit
Kids at the Bar
La Zebra
Master Shortie
Meech
Messkid
Mustard Pimp
Religion
Richie Jamz
Sikki Kidz
Sonic Truth
Star Guitar
Streetlab
Super Milkmen
The Constellations
The Grenade
The Knocks
The Muscle Club
The Pragmatic
The Vanish
Three Fingers
VIKING
Weekend Warriors