Machine Shop: Hype Machine Team Blog

We’ve temporarily limited the number of favorite searches to 10 due to load issues for users who had more favorited.  The inactive searches are still visible in your profiles, but they are marked with “search not tracked” on the right.

If you are one of the heavier users with many searches, can you email us and let us know how you were using the site?

UPDATE: Now the limit is 30.  We will continue to revise and monitor this situation

The Hype Machine SXSW 2009 Party!

We are all prepared for our annual trek to Austin for the best conference of the year: South by Southwest. This year is extra special because:

We’re Throwing A Party! on March 18th, open to EVERYONE! The Zeitgeist Radio Shows were such a hit, we’ve decided to move forward with a weekly show that highlights the most popular music on the Hype Machine each week. Get all the deets on the The Hype Machine Radio Show Launch Party page and listen to the very first episode, a preview of the bands playing at our party.

We’re On A Panel! Anthony is speaking on a panel this year called Help! My iPod Thinks I’m Emo all about music recommendation systems, the benefits/drawbacks of social vs mechanical picks and more. Should be a lively debate with The Echonest‘s Paul Lamere.

And of course, for all things SXSW, you should check out my side project: sxsw2009.sched.org/ to create a schedule to export to your iCal/iPhone or just print out! This year we’ve also added the ability to get SXSW show recommendations based on your Hype Machine, Last.FM and Grooveshark profiles.

There are now 3 ways to view the front page.

Overview (Default):  We show you posts from all blogs, but each blog is limited to having one post per day shown.  This means if a blog posts twice in a day, the second post will not be visible.  That said, a single post may contain several tracks and that will be displayed normally.

All Blogs view: All posts from all blogs we track.

Top Blogs view: All posts from the top 100 blogs as determined by their Technorati and Delicious popularity.

We are gradually releasing parts of a new update that we started over the weekend.

An important change on the front page is the selection of blogs we draw from.  By default, we now show posts from the top 100 music blogs as reported by Technorati, Delicious and our data.  You can click “all blogs” to see the latest posts from all blogs we index.

This is an ongoing experiment and we are likely to tweak this further.  We want to see what changes we’ll see in the usage when we make the front page move slower and have a more recognizable set of blogs in the set.  This is all to make it friendlier and accessible to those typing in “hypem.com” for the first time.

Would love your thoughts on this as well, comment or email us.

UPDATE 2009-03-10: We are close to releasing a new experimental update that uses an idea suggested by Jeff from the Heart on a Stick blog: having the front page list one post per day (24h) per blog for all blogs. The post may contain multiple tracks but only one (typically the first one in the 24h period) will be visible. This will be default view. It addresses our concerns about volume on the front page as well as flattens the playing field for many blogs out there. What do you think?

The full view and the top 100 views will also be available.

UPDATE 2009-03-10 6:30PM ET: The new view is live: http://blog.hypem.com/2009/03/3-ways-to-view-the-front-page/

“I love music blogs because they’re music fans. They’re authentic and passionate about music. They’re no different than me. All they’re doing is spreading the word about stuff they like. The authentic will rise to the top, which is why I like aggregators like The Hype Machine. I think it’s brilliant. It’s a great way of seeing what music fans are talking about versus some other filter. I’d rather the filter be a social filter, and then you can go into niches. Maybe it’s a bluegrass filter or a country filter or a hard rock filter or an ambient filter. Whatever. Those people are really passionate about that music. You know what? That’s what it’s about. Songs are not copyright. Songs are emotions.”

— Terry McBride on music blogs in the interview with Rollo & Grady.  More about Terry on Wikipedia, his bio and blog.  Rollo & Grady has more interviews with a winning music/web industry crowd.