Our annual Music Blog Zeitgeist 2009 is here. All week we will be publishing the Top Artists/Albums/Songs (10 each day) and on Friday you will find out the top 10 of the year!
The Zeitgeist presents an interesting challenge each year: how do we keep taking things to the next level? This year won’t disappoint. Here’s a rundown:
Top 50 Artists: We tabulated the total number of songs from each band posted in 2009 by blogs on The Hype Machine. Then we invited 50 visual artists to create a new piece of artwork inspired by the band’s music and including the band’s name. The results have absolutely blown us away. If you love a piece, click through and let the artist know!
Top 50 Albums: We collected 550 bloggers’ personal top 10 lists and assigned a total score to each of the 1,313 albums (#1=15 points, #2=14, #3=13…) to get a final ranking. We partnered with Grooveshark to power the full album streams and used CC-licensed Flickr Photos of each band as the background. You can also view the full photo behind each album and explore the individual lists that mention an album.
Top Songs Show: We changed things up a bit this year and presented our list of the most favorited songs of each month as a downloadable radio show. Since this generally skews to the dancier side of things, this is a fantastic mix to keep the party going.
This was truly a community effort and wouldn’t have been possible without the musicians who put out such inspiring music, our own users, the 50 visual artists, the 50 photographers, the 550 bloggers, Jeff fromHeart On A Stick (who passed the torch a few years back), David from Largehearted Boy (who does an insane job at collecting best-of lists), Grooveshark (my Gainesville neighbors powering the album streams), Monika Wensel (the artist behind the fabric art on the splash page), SoundCloud (our Berlin friends powering the Radio Show), Adam and Gregory (for the 1-line review inspiration), our Radio Team (Dev, Abbey, Dan) and of course the rest of our awesome team @ The Hype Machine (Anthony, Zoya, Arkadiy, Scott).
Now…go fall in love with something new.
Haven’t you ever considered giving a different treatment to remixes, both in day to day indexing and end of the year lists? Because, let’s be honest, most of the top (at least you didn’t call them “best”) songs of 2009 aren’t exactly last year’s zeitgeist. They may work for a party, but I don’t think many people will listen to them again, ever. OK, it’s not your fault that people favorite remixes so overwhelmingly, but really, you should tweak the Machine a little in favor of original versions.
January 4, 2010 6:02 pm
The show is great, but in addition, for the top songs, can we get a list like the other categories? its all a little confusing, is the show thats up now the top tracks of the year or january 09? also why 29 songs? the show is a fantastic idea but it should be supplementary to how you guys did it in past years. gimme a list!
as always though, keep up the great work, you guys rock
January 4, 2010 6:43 pm
Great! Hypem is the best! I look forward to discovering another healthy helping of great artists and albums from this smorgasbord of music you have put together for your beloved friends and fans. Thank you from a long-time fan and supporter, here’s to another great year!
January 4, 2010 8:11 pm
I love Apollo Andels new song “Morning To Evening”! I hope it’s on here soon.
January 4, 2010 8:20 pm
I agree with the remix concept. Is there a way to have a sub search engine or place for remixes. They get so annoying when all I want to hear is the original!
January 4, 2010 10:31 pm
The problem with moving remixes, is what defines a remix? Yeah, it’s about editing the original, but I’m sure sometimes I want to hear the remix with original stuff. For example if a rock band takes another rock track and makes it their own, it is not dance music, so I would rather see it in with the original stuff.
I really like the idea of having the top tracks being remixes, because it seems to me that all the top tracks last year are in albums anyway.
Good work this year, some of the artwork is incredible.
January 5, 2010 5:58 am
@69, I am glad the top favorited songs tend to be ‘on the dancier side’, or simply remixes, mixes, and whatnot. That’s the music I like, and that’s the music I listen to every minute of every day of the week.
You could say my entire life is a party, but still.
Now that I finally comment on a blog post, isn’t there some place where the ‘community’ can actually get together and discuss songs on hypem? Just hearting them seems so superficial, when music is all but superficial.
January 5, 2010 7:31 am
Also, as much as I like this one big mix thing for the most popular songs, I miss last year’s zeitgeist system. Right now, many (many!) songs are mentioned, fewer are played, and those that are played are only played shortly.
Would have liked a list of ALL songs mentioned so I can go back and listen to them fully, or download the lot again.
January 5, 2010 7:44 am
I am sorry for complaining so much, but as I am listening to the music it is a little frustrating to keep being reminded that i am listening to “the hype machine music zeitgeist 2009, all the best tracks of 2009”. which brings me to the fact i’m listening more to the pretty girl’s voice than to the music.
January 5, 2010 7:49 am
I’m a huge fan of the zeitgeist & look forward to this every year. As the 2009 album list is powered through Grooveshark, are we to assume there’s no way to scrobble our listening history to last.fm? Would love to maintain a listening history, but it doesn’t appear to be available with this setup…
January 5, 2010 11:57 am
I would love to actually be able to see the list of the top tracks both mentioned and played while I’m listening to the radio show. Where can I get this list? Does it exist?
January 5, 2010 1:40 pm
yep, the tracks are all listed on the page: http://hypem.com/#/zeitgeist/2009/songs
January 5, 2010 1:43 pm
Just wanted to say that you guys are awesome. This site is genius.
January 5, 2010 6:55 pm
For some reason when I click on ‘play album’ it just takes me back to the main front page. Is there something that needs to be done on my end? I did reconfirm my email address. Maybe your servers are just swamped at the moment?
January 7, 2010 2:04 pm
I figured this out. The albums don’t play on an Internet Explorer 7 browser – just so you know. Works fine on Firefox.
January 7, 2010 11:06 pm
Hi, congrats again on this fantastic list. I’m loving the albums of the year – it’s great to be able to check out these albums as I’m reading about them.
Less so with the “top songs” though – they’re all remixes! This would definitely be a feature I’d love to see in the Hype Machine – an ability to flag and ignore remixes (maybe just as simple as anything with the word “remix” in the title). It makes me feel so OLD that I’m listening to remix after remix (and not really enjoying them – the dancey stuff doesn’t really do it for me).
thanks!
January 8, 2010 2:13 pm
You guys are awesome and I love your site so much!!
Just one note: I would agree to the post of “69” of 4 January: Can the remixes be treated separately (amongst the top songs of the year listings)…?
January 9, 2010 5:25 am
I just wanted to say that I think remixes should be left in, but perhaps it would be nice to be able to see all the remixes of a song (on the list) including the original, and a way to compare how popular they all were in comparison to each other. Maybe that way people will appreciate it without necessarily having to lie to them about which songs were actually the most popular.
I come to Hype Machine just for the remixes and mashups. I (heart) them and they end up in my playlist because they are unique and those are the versions I will come back and listen to. Where the hell else can I be guaranteed to find them? If I want to hear the album version, I’ll buy the album. I don’t think it’s fair to punish Hype Machine for being damn good at what it does best.
January 10, 2010 12:23 am
I’m doing a survey related to the internet and music and their effect upon each other. It doesn’t take too long but asks some thought-provoking questions in a friendly way. Very relevant to anyone who’s interested in what the Hype Machine is doing, especially with a project like this. PLEASE take a moment to do it:
http://www.somequestions.co.uk
cheers
January 10, 2010 9:42 pm
Man, that’s a lot of work! I’ve seen a ton of sites who have done “of the year” and “of the decade” lists and not put in anywhere near the effort Hypem has. Kudos to the group for a great project and some very interesting artwork.
nK
January 12, 2010 1:46 pm
Could you please make yearly/monthly ratings available all year long, not just on Zeitgeist’s once a year? I would really love to be able to get all songs sorted by repost count for any month.
January 31, 2010 6:04 am
hey, i was wondering if any of you guys could help me…..
see on the top albums of 2009 radio show, theres a song thats played 2.15mins in thats remixed with the grizzly bear ‘2 weeks’ song and i was just wondering what that song was cos i really like it!
thanks
February 9, 2010 3:16 pm
sorry, its 1.53mins in
February 9, 2010 3:17 pm
It’s the Fred Falke remix of “Two Weeks”:
http://hypem.com/track/1000810/Grizzly+Bear+-+Two+Weeks+Fred+Falke+Extended+Mix+
February 9, 2010 3:35 pm
I need some help..
In the top albums of 2009 radio show, theres a song thats played from 0.53 to 1.02 .. The song is used for the intro of the radioshow.. I have no idea who can be but i really like the song.! (: .. Can anybody tell me the name of the song or the remix please.? Many thanks.!
March 3, 2010 6:34 am
Please, somebody tell me )’:
March 4, 2010 4:23 am
Hello,
Are you continue to invite visual artists to create a new piece of
artwork inspired by the band’s music?
I know one. His music artwork is merging art and music, really the
shapes of music.
Let me know if you would like to invite him after looking at his work.
August 11, 2010 8:34 pm