We love discovering new music (that’s why we started the site, after all). Today, we made a small change to the Popular page to keep everyone finding more new stuff.
Popular keeps track of songs that Hype Machine users are favoriting the most on the site. There are thousands of new reviews posted on music blogs every day, so this is a great filter to see which tracks are catching people’s attention. We used to display this list of 50 songs starting with 1, but now the direction has been reversed, so when you click Popular, you’ll start listening at the 50th most loved track.
Why the change? We wanted to adjust for the cumulative advantage in our charts. Cumulative advantage is the idea that the more popular something is, the more likely we are to choose it, thus making it more popular. (If you’re interested in the research behind this, download “Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market” (PDF) by Salganik et al). The lower end of the chart is more fluid and more open to entry, so you’re more likely to keep discovering something good as you listen all the way down to #1.
UPDATE June 30, 2012: We’ve added a few awesome ways to sort the contents of the popular page. Check them out!
UPDATE July 26, 2012: The familiar 1-50 order is back, but the awesome ways of sorting the Popular page remain. Enjoy!
It only shows 50 til 32, and the rest seams to be hidden.
June 6, 2012 4:02 pm
this is such a good idea!
June 6, 2012 4:03 pm
Works now for me, all good.
Regarding the changes: If I wanted to discover new songs, I would have just clicked their. 🙂
Anyways, keep up the great work.
June 6, 2012 4:06 pm
Like Roben @4:02pm says, it’s only showing 50 thru 32 as of 6:09pm.
June 6, 2012 5:10 pm
Don’t like it…
I come to the popular page to find out what are the most popular tracks for the last 3 days. I’m not really interested in what, among a group of the most popular songs arbitrarily cut off at the top 50, made it to the bottom of that list.
I understand that you want to reduce the distortion from cumulative advantage, but the popular charts are not a place for it. You’ll simply shift that cumulative advantage from the top 10 to the top 50-41. The front page is the front page, and anything there will have an unfair advantage.
If you’re concerned about Popular tracks’ position on the front page affecting the rating of the top tracks themselves, then why not simply count “Likes” earned on the Popular page as worth less than if they’d been encountered on another page?
June 6, 2012 6:35 pm
The bottom of the top 50 list seems to be a stale (tracks that dropped a few days or even a more than a week ago) so if the purpose is to let new tracks have an equal chance than it might be best to give a harsher ranking penalty to tracks that have been around for a while so its easy for fresh tracks to make the charts. Another good option would be a second popular chart of just fresh music (maybe top ten of the day). It could even be along side the regular charts.
Also I think there should be an option to reverse it because its somewhat of a pain in the ass to see whats at the top and I’m going to want to know whats #1 anyways.
June 6, 2012 7:04 pm
Yea, I dislike having the top songs at the bottom. I’ll always prefer to start at the most liked songs and work my way down. If I’m spending a limited amount of time on the site, it makes no sense to miss out on the most highly rated new songs.
PS, it’s kinda funny that the #50 song right now is off of Watch The Throne.
June 6, 2012 8:18 pm
And I’ll still love the site either way. The Hype Machine is amazing
June 6, 2012 8:20 pm
Not a fan of starting from 50. I go to the Popular tag to see what is trending in the top 10. If I want to see other things, I scroll all the way to the bottom.
Is it possible to make it sortable, ascending/descending order so people can pick which they like better?
June 6, 2012 8:45 pm
It’s an interesting idea, but maybe give us the ability to decide for ourselves of what order the users can listen to music. the popular page should have the most popular music starting at the top going down… Just my thoughts, other than that GREAT WORK HYPEM!
June 7, 2012 2:25 am
I love the fact that you actually incorporate real science into your web design!
June 7, 2012 4:31 am
this is a really good idea guys! the hypem.com/popular page is gold..
June 7, 2012 4:59 am
Let’s say that I spend over an hour listening from 50-32. Once the AJAX loads the next set as I scroll down, there is a good chance the ordering in popularity could have changed and then the next set that loads will either have a few repeaters (of songs that were originally in 50-32) or chances are I might miss a song or two. Sup with that?
June 7, 2012 9:31 am
smart! will it prevent the kanye-coldplay-rhianna-machine effect tho? yet to be seen…
June 7, 2012 9:41 am
you should at least make an option to have the order reversed back. offer either way. not a huge fan, i end up having to scroll through a bunch of songs i don’t like to get to the good ones.
June 7, 2012 9:57 am
An option to re-reverse the order would be nice though…
And another idea: It would be great if we could hide all songs which we already hearted… That way we could easily listen to all the new songs in the popular-playlist. 😀
June 7, 2012 11:29 am
Here’s an alternative: How about displaying the top 20 (or 50, or whatever) unranked on a single page, and in a random order for each user. That way each user is seeing the most popular songs, but the cumulative advantage for the top songs is diminished because the order is different for each user.
I totally agree with your logic behind the new layout, but when I only have a limited time to listen I count on the rankings as a filter.
June 7, 2012 11:50 am
Yeah, not a fan of this.
It’s too big of game changer. I want to be able to click popular and instantly see the most hyped tracks. Not to have to scroll to the bottom.
If nothing else, make it top 20 instead of 50. I don’t think 50 is a good default.
June 7, 2012 12:29 pm
Why can’t I just shuffle the order or re-order it myself? It wouldn’t be that difficult to do. You can support HTML5 drag-n-drop (old browsers be damned), and let users move them up/down, or hit a re-shuffle button that randomizes the order.
Order is problematic on this site. The player isn’t very robust, and always dies on me after several minutes. Then I have to come back and F5 the page (the only way to fix it), and then I have to scroll down and figure out where I was. I’d prefer if I could just re-shuffle the order myself.
June 7, 2012 12:53 pm
Sorry to pile on here, but having the Popular page start at #50 is a bad call. There are already plenty of ways on this site to discover new music, but this page is for seeing what’s top of the pops.
At least make a button to reverse the numbering.
June 7, 2012 12:55 pm
I don’t like this at all.
Conflicts with the very notion of what makes a “Popular” song, and in fact makes it more difficult for me to find the music I’m looking for. In other words, it makes my user experience worse, not better.
There are lots of ways to discover new music on Hype Machine, which seems to be the impetus for this decision – through blogs, through Hype Machine radio, through friends, and through the constantly refreshing popular chart (and I use all of those). There is (was) only one way to find the music that is hot RIGHT NOW, which is the music I most often show my friends, and that just became much more difficult to find.
To me, this seems like it creates a much larger problem than it solves. I’m not going to use a different site, since I’ve used Hype Machine daily for 3+ years, but this is a major annoyance. Would hope that you guys heavily consider reversing this, or at the very least, give users the option of using the former version. I’d be heartbroken if Hypem made a major change to a core feature of their site (like Digg did 2 years ago) and slipped into obscurity.
June 7, 2012 12:56 pm
In opera browser the whole chart dont load, only 50-32
June 7, 2012 1:14 pm
Please give the option to start at #1. I really don’t like this.
June 7, 2012 1:25 pm
I love the Hype Machine (I’ve quite literally got the T-shirt!) but this starting at 50 thing is annoying. I agree with a lot of the other comments, insofar as I can understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, but at least give users the option of reversing it back from 1-50. I might only spend 15-30 mins listening to HM and I want to hear the most popular tracks from the last 3 days.
June 7, 2012 1:42 pm
Not to be a broken record but I agree with everyone else. Put number 1 at the top. They’ve earned it.
June 7, 2012 1:58 pm
Love it. I always scroll down and go from the bottom up anyways.
June 7, 2012 2:41 pm
If you have an issue with scrolling down, bookmark http://hypem.com/popular/3 and it will take you directly to the most popular tracks.
Despite it being counter intuitive at first, I like the choice and respect the ability to deviate from the norm
June 7, 2012 3:02 pm
The title says ‘Popular page changes’ – I think you forgot the prefix of ‘Un’ at the beginning.
June 7, 2012 5:10 pm
Doesn’t really make sense if you visit the site daily which i do. Now i get to see a chris brown remix at the top of my page- very revolutionary.
June 7, 2012 5:31 pm
I don’t think this a good idea. Commercially speaking I mean.
Most of the people simply want to click on the first track, to see which one is the best at this moment. I don’t have the time to listen to 50 tracks everyday! I want to listen to the one that have been selected: That’s the whole point of the “popular” page.
Of course I understand your point about the cumulative advantage. However, I think that people who really want to listen to tracks that are not popular yet: Well, they just go in “latest”.
With the new system, you cancel the separation between “popular” and “latest”!
Really, you should go back to the previous version. (There’s no shame in this!)
June 8, 2012 12:32 am
If you want to keep this system, I think you should at least reduce the number of songs from 50 to 20, so that we don’t have to enter “http://hypem.com/popular/3” to access to the best songs…
June 8, 2012 1:00 am
I used to love jumping on, sticking on track #1 and then working my way down the list, I can’t do that anymore, if I start at track #1 it won’t continue upwards it will just end.
I appreciate the logic but could you add the functionality to reverse the list and listen to it 1-50.
Quite frankly I have little interest in the bottom 50 since they are generally old songs and I listen to the chart to hear new ones 🙂
June 8, 2012 6:56 am
I think someone touched on this already, but the cumulative advantage factor is something that is inherent to the idea of popularity. Like a snowball rolling down a hill. If something is good enough to pick up steam, it will. By re-ordering the tracks, I think you’ll only bring about a statistically insignificant change. For most users, it just adds an inconvenience. Most people like to start at the top, so they’ll just scroll down, defeating the purpose of your change. The popular songs will still be the ones that are more likely to be chosen. Their advantage wasn’t that they were on the top of the page, it was because they were ranked the highest. For the casual user, a visit to this site is a short fun break, not a set aside hour or two for listening to 50 songs. So that’s why most people just want to listen to the top 10 or 20 songs. Also, if one were to start from song 50, by the time they’ve listened to 10-15 songs, it would be highly likely that #50-#30 would have shifted order. There would be new songs, and some songs would be gone, or some songs might have broken into the top 30. Starting from #1 is a much safer stabler route. I believe that while your intentions for the change were genuine, the end result is not a progressive one. Please switch back, or find a new solution, something along the lines of showing the first 20 songs without ranking, or show the ranking only after listening, etc.
June 8, 2012 6:59 am
“Most people like to start at the top, so they’ll just scroll down”
I meant, most people like to start at the best ranked song, so they’ll just immediately scroll down to reach it.
June 8, 2012 7:01 am
Love the toss up.
June 8, 2012 10:09 am
My first impression is that I don’t like it either…because I listen to hypem while I’m at work and find myself replaying the top few songs over and over again in a given day if i really like them.
On principal though, I think it’s a really good idea. The first thing I looked for was a way to change the sort order so it was 1-50, not 50-1, but couldn’t find a way to do that. Could you guys add that in as an option?
(I LOVE your site by the way, it’s how i discover almost all of my new music now)
June 8, 2012 11:01 am
I honestly don’t like this feature either. There should be a drop down to reverse the order.
June 8, 2012 12:59 pm
really cool idea guys. To everyone bitching about not having time to scroll down to the bottom of the list? Seriously? If you’re exploring music you clearly aren’t in a huge rush that you need those couple of seconds back for your finger to literally scroll down the page. Absolutely retarded. i think it’s a good idea in theory but just for convience it can get annoying to always have to scroll down. Although it’s not a issue of being on a time limit or in a rush. That is just dumb.
June 8, 2012 1:19 pm
Really! You still haven’t changed it YET!
June 8, 2012 3:59 pm
You see the strange shape of the green bars?
They all have a peak in the middle, and then the bars become smaller and smaller.
It means the new system is absurd.
As soon as a song has a big bar, and wins some places in the ranking, people stop listening to it: It’s normal, it’s too far away in the playlist.
June 8, 2012 4:31 pm
I have to agree with the general sentiment here. This change ruins the site for me in that I can’t start with the best songs and work my way down. Since I can’t play the songs in the reverse order. Unless an option to put them in ascending order appears or someone writes a greasemonkey script to undo this reordering, I can’t see myself using the site any longer.
Hoping you see the wisdom in offering the option before I give up on a site I’ve really come to love 🙂
June 8, 2012 5:17 pm
Love to see you guys trying out new layouts and whatnot but it’s just not the same going from the bottom to the top..
June 8, 2012 5:40 pm
Yeah, it’s really annoying and you should at least give us the option to change it back if we want to. I come here to check out the best songs, I don’t want to scroll to do that.
June 8, 2012 7:09 pm
I’m not a huge fan of the new layout. The way I’ve been using Hype Machine for the last three years is to play from the current best tracks and listen until I hit 5-6 bad songs then switch to something else. With this new layout I’m likely to just start playing from 10 down, and leave once I’ve finished with top song. I feel like it’ll lower the amount of time I’ll be on the site daily.
I wouldn’t mind if the default layout is descending – it’ll help promote a better variety of songs. However I would like to see the option to switch between ascending and descending mode.
June 8, 2012 7:11 pm
I don’t mind the idea, but sometimes I just like to listen to the top songs. You should give listeners the option to listen to it either way, not force them into one way.
June 9, 2012 1:12 am
I don’t mind the idea too much, I think it is a very responsible more, but I think it could be improved by having likes have less significance over time. So if something is at the top of the charts, over time, it will need more and more likes to stay there.
June 9, 2012 3:15 am
Don’t like this change.
Echo the comments above, can we at least choose the order we want to listen to our songs in?
June 9, 2012 4:41 am
Please allow us to choose between both list styles please. I personally like listening from 1 downwards.
June 9, 2012 6:51 am
Unfortunately not a huge fan of this change. Would love an option for a switch back.
June 9, 2012 8:36 am
prefer from 1 to 50
June 9, 2012 8:36 am
I would honestly like to see the metrics on the new change. I can’t possibly see how this is good for the site.
For example: I’m a first time user of hypem, and I go to the popular page. I click and play the first song. Instead of listening to the best song of the week, I am now listening to a bunch of mediocre songs. I leave the site not to return, because the music selection is bad.
tl;dr hypem is now promoting their worst songs as “popular”.
June 9, 2012 10:36 am
awful idea the idea of the most popular page is in fact to show the most popular songs. Guess I will be leaving hypem
June 9, 2012 11:58 am
Hey guys,
Love everything you guys are doing at hype, and I visit the site daily. But, I really don’t like this change. I get what you’re trying to do, but I really enjoy being able to listen to no. 1 and then have the playlist flow right down from there. I’m just not interested in listening from 50 onward.
Maybe if you made it an option to sort the list in descending order from 1 that would be a good solution?
Cheers
Chris
June 9, 2012 1:09 pm
I love you guys, but how many days are you gonna wait to switch it back?
June 9, 2012 1:51 pm
I totally love the site and Hype Machine is a website I frequent day in, day out; however, as aforementioned above, I am a bit disappointed in the new change. I see where you are coming from with the cumulative advantage standpoint, but I thought it, or a variance of the problem, months ago when you changed the popular page to the “Blogged in the last 3 days” format (Which I love.)
Either Way, I hope you change it back as it is an integral part of the HYPEm experience.
June 9, 2012 11:45 pm
As someone who is on here maybe a couple times a day, I actually like the new change and the idea behind it. In a perfect world I would prefer the list to have a reversible 501 option on the page, but I’ll take the fresh new twist it puts on the first songs I usually see when I log in. Keep doing what you’re doing guys. I dig it.
June 10, 2012 6:48 am
I’ve been a user and huge fan of the site for years. I am familiar with Salganik’s article, and I applaud your intention to disrupt cumulative advantage. That being said, I hate this change. For better or worse, it is relevant to me what other people are listening to; even if the #1 song and the #50 are identical in quality, I will not be able to talk about the #50 song with anyone.
In terms of my listening habits, I will now play the #10-#1 song, then #20-#11, etc. Frustrating.
Why don’t you make the #50-#1 format the default, but allow a change to #1-#50 in the settings?
June 10, 2012 9:15 am
@clef and @musicmatician have great points! There are better ways to achieve what you guys are trying to. Making it available to the public to discuss and offer ideas is invaluable and a lot of this feedback is brilliant.
Also, not the biggest fan of the remixing organization. It still doesn’t eliminate the annoyance of repeat songs and rather groups arbitrary remixes in the top. This hasn’t yet helped me find anything that I like more than the track at the top of the charts. Just my thoughts though.
June 10, 2012 11:37 am
Not a huge fan of the reverse order. I go to the “popular” tab for a reason.
I used to set it on track #1 and play through to the rest.
Nice idea I guess but you should at least give us the option of changing the order.
June 10, 2012 11:17 pm
Please give an option to sort by ascending.
Going straight to “hypem/popular/3” isn’t really a favorable solution, since the songs are still out of order.
Also, not sure if I just need to refresh the page, but for me it’s currently sorted by 50-31, then scrolling down shows 31 back to 50 again… Seems a little buggy.
June 11, 2012 10:21 am
Ughh, great idea but now there’re new problems: 5 page refreshes and I can still only see 50-32 when I just wanted to hear the top tracks.
Can we just be able to sort ascending/descending in the future?
June 11, 2012 1:16 pm
Have loved this site for years, hate this new change.
I come to Popular for a reason, and love keeping track of the top tracks. Now I have to open up down to the bottom and scroll up? Pretty counter-intuitive!
June 11, 2012 1:54 pm
Yeah, I don’t like this. Top tracks become top tracks for a reason. Further, I sit at work for 8 hours, so I usually get through the top 50 anyway. Is there any way to give us the option of which order we want to listen in?
This genuinely ruins my hypem listening experience.
June 11, 2012 2:29 pm
It’s a nice concept and echoing other sentiments here it would be good to have an option to re-order to 1 to 50
June 11, 2012 3:00 pm
umm maybe u guys should make it, like we can change how we want it listed, cuz sometimes some of this tracks on the top 50 are way to disco like for me, and i cant really glove to them…
June 11, 2012 3:52 pm
Seemed like a good idea at first, but the more I’m on here, the more I wish this was different. Why not just add a drop box so we can choose whether to put it in ascending or descending order? But having number 1 permanently set at the bottom – not a good call in my opinion.
June 11, 2012 5:56 pm
UGHHHHHH this top 50 thing neeeeeeeds to change back!!! I want to hear number 1 #dying
June 11, 2012 5:57 pm
I can appreciate the concept of this but to be honest I’m not a big fan of this either.. at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter to me what is at the top end of the scales.. If I like it then I heart it, simple as. I usually work my way through the top 50 anyway and often find that I like songs better further on down the list that at the top.. I thought the entries only had a limited shelf life anyway to keep things fresh?
June 11, 2012 7:35 pm
I think there is another bias that needs corrected too.
Since people only have the option to ‘like’ songs, the most listened to songs (i.e. 50-46 in this format) inevitably vault into the top 10 every time, even if they are terrible.. I mean songs are getting into the top 10 now with under 300 likes – it’s absurd. If you are posting scientific studies and adjusting the site based on them, you have to admit only 250 people liking a song is way too small of a sample size to push a song into the top 10. If only 10% of the people listening to a song are liking it, it should not be ‘most popular’. I think you should allow people to dislike a song, so if only 10% of the people like it, it will not be able to climb the chart like it can now just by being the lucky song that enters in at exactly 50.
June 11, 2012 9:42 pm
Love Hype M. I choose music for a large retail chain and rely very heavily on the popular list. Beats using Radio/TV charts because they don’t cycle quick enough and gravitate to established names too quickly.
The reverse order from 50 – 1 doesn’t effect me greatly as I think there is little quality difference between the top 50 tracks. Although, I can see how it somewhat goes against a normal ‘top 50’ list.
I quite like the idea of Likes coming from the popular page as being of lesser value. However I suspect the shear quantity of popular page likes vs other page likes is so distorted that the value rating would need to be substantially lower.
June 11, 2012 10:19 pm
Please, please at the very least give us the option to reverse the order. Not a fan of this 50-1 setup
June 12, 2012 1:01 am
Yeah…not loving this. I went to the “popular” tab to see the popular songs, not the 50th most popular song. Also, like the previous commenter said. It only shows 50-32. How do I get to #1?
June 12, 2012 11:04 am
THIS IS STUPID!!
June 12, 2012 1:57 pm
I understand the reasoning here but at least provide the option to switch back and forth. Also, the AJAX that keeps loading more and more as you scroll is no good. The result is a ton of scrolling which is driving my mouse wheel to its death.
June 12, 2012 3:19 pm
K…I just found out why I couldn’t get to #1. I have to use IE8 at work and this page doesn’t work on IE8. I just tried it in Firefox and it works fine. Still don’t like the popular page, but at least I can get to #1 now. (just not at work)
June 12, 2012 4:17 pm
Sigh, looks like it’s time to find another site that will give me the latest and greatest. I understand the reasoning but this was the complete wrong way of going about it. I just had a song I favorited over a year ago pop up at the top of the popular list. I used the list to find popular NEW music.
June 12, 2012 7:02 pm
And that was a bad choice…
June 13, 2012 12:33 am
If I can scroll to the bottom and see what the top tunes are all I’m all for change but it seems to stop at 32 often and now 12.
June 13, 2012 2:57 am
Understand..still hates!
June 13, 2012 6:46 am
I really don’t like this new setup… If I wanted to listen to the 50th most popular song, then I would get there eventually. I like to start at the most popular and listen all the way through to the “less popular” ones. I would have gotten there either way… but now I have to skip to the very last page, and click on each song individually and it doesn’t flow in order. So, thanks for the inconvenience…
June 13, 2012 11:57 am
You’ve really gone from putting good music up on hypem to making this americas top 40 gay ass count down. Congrats ! I hope Soundcloud makes you their biznatches in the long run.
June 13, 2012 2:35 pm
I’m late to the party, but please, please give us an option to sort descending in the Popular category. Echoing what someone else said, I don’t always have a ton of time to listen to music. As of now, I will be starting at 3 and allowing it play down to 1, and then going back to 10 and allowing it to play down to 3 and so on. Not excited about that. Starting with the top song allows me to hear the “good stuff” and then let things play out and then pick and choose what I want from the further down stuff.
Granted, maybe it is only the “good stuff” because of “cumulative advantage”, but it sounds like you are looking to increase the scientific value of your Popular page rankings at the expense of user experience, and even more importantly, what people want and expect from a Hype Machine popular section. I mean, this is HYPE Machine, not “Undiscovered Song Blogged by 2 People Machine”.
Methinks you guys are sitting in your flannels and fedoras, cringing at Indy blogs calling Hype Machine the top 40 or Mainstream of online music.
June 13, 2012 5:18 pm
Another vote for at least giving us the option of 1-50 sort.. this new way is very annoying to use. I can’t imagine that this is the optimal solution to the cumulative advantage problem, and am not sold that cumulative advantage is necessarily a bad thing on a list of ‘Popular’ music…
June 13, 2012 5:31 pm
Equally people are more likely to ‘love’ tracks by bands that they already know. So surely if you really want to encourage people to find new music, you should remove the song names too? With this new system all I’ve ended up doing is flicking down the list looking for artists that I recognise where as before I’d let it play down from 1 until I stopped liking the music.
And at the moment an advantage is going to be given to the songs in the top 50. What about the songs at 51-60? Why not just order them randomly if you want to encourage people to listen to new things. Oh wait, that’s more or less what the front page does.
June 14, 2012 8:10 am
please give option to change it to 1-50. Id appreciate being able to downvote a song btw but its cool anyway
June 14, 2012 9:46 am
PLEASE GIVE US THE OPTION. This is terrible. I hate it. I want to be able to see what’s MOST POPULAR when I click on the popular tab, not what’s 50th most popular. This is ridiculous. You don’t have to change it back but at least give us the option. I’m so disappointed.
June 14, 2012 3:43 pm
See my name. The guy above me gets it.
June 14, 2012 5:39 pm
I understand the logic behind it, but at least give us the option to switch the order. I feel like this is fundamental list/field design. You guys are always making weird design choices for this site, when what it really is, is a streaming music service. Sure it’s based on popularity and it’s mission is different than your normal music streaming site, but there are elementary elements of streaming music services online that you are still missing after so many years.
this change to the popular list isn’t only annoying (without the option to re-order) but i feel like you should be spending your time and money on more important changes to the site that will draw more members..not piss off your current ones.
For instance why not have a song queue……or embedding streams on facebook so people don’t have to open a whole new tab to the site. ….or better ways for members to sort their favorites list…
there are so many things that would make this site so much better…but you are caught up on weird meaningless design details all the time.
my 2 cents.
June 14, 2012 8:21 pm
So when is something going to be done about this?
It’s not hard to add a sorting function so that those of us who wish can listen from 1 -> 50.
June 15, 2012 4:11 am
Here’s some data. Please consider it.
Pre-Popular Change: Average days/week logged in – 5, Average time/day – 2 hours.
Post-Popular Change: Days/week logged in – 1, Average time/day – 30 seconds, just to see if you changed it back.
June 15, 2012 8:51 am
I echo everyones sentiments here. I love discovering new music, but this is painful! I have my feed for new music, i want to see whats popular fast, especially when i havent been on hype for a few days.
June 15, 2012 10:49 am
No longer have much of a desire to visit this website until this issue is fixed. Theories of “Cumulative Advantage” aside, I want my old 1-50 back. Please fix this soon Hypem, or your loyal fans will be leaving in droves.
June 15, 2012 1:15 pm
I’m with everyone above. I’ve been trying it for a couple days, and I’m still not happy with it. I wanna know what’s poppin, what’s what, what’s good, not the fiftieth most favorited track within three days. Seems counter-intuitive, cumulative advantage aside, to structure the popular tab this way.
I agree with the threads above, about having at least a sorting feature for those disagreeing with the sites direction, but I’m in favor of alternative ways to navigate cumulative advantage– its a valid concern. A collection of tracks in random order is a strong candidate, I believe. Regardless, what’s going on right now isn’t working.
June 15, 2012 6:18 pm
Not a big fan of the changes TBH… I like listening to the number 1 first then leave it playing while I do something else.
June 15, 2012 7:03 pm
http://soundcloud.com/tracks
enough said.
June 16, 2012 7:36 pm
Embrace change?
Love that in life people are always quicker and louder in voicing their negative sentiments than positive ones. I’ve been a hype machine user for 5 or 6 years and I love both the new layout and the reasoning behind the change! The inevitable rise in hypem’s popularity has been mirrored by the number of average tracks which have flooded the blogosphere, diluting and saturating popular charts and the site in general. Thanks for continually shifting the focus more towards new and emerging music. Stick to your ethos and everyone – unsurprisingly – will follow.
June 17, 2012 4:55 am
I think we should be able to sort either 50 to 1 or 1 to 50 based on user preference.
June 17, 2012 4:31 pm
Another vote to give us a preference to switch the order of the top 50 back to the way it was – or better yet, adding a shuffle option, for those that want to discover completely new music.
Initially, my knee-jerk reaction was complete confusion. Then, after reading your reasoning it kinda makes sense. However, I’d wager plenty of Hype Machine users don’t play through the whole top 50 – meaning that for most of us, we get to listen to maybe 10 or 20 of the least popular songs, without ever getting to the best tracks. Consequently, the Hype Machine just doesn’t serve the same usefulness it used to.
Now I find myself scrolling all the way down to the bottom, clicking to play a song, waiting around for the moment it finishes rather than moving on with something productive just to be ready to then play the number two song.
I feel like the intended use case of the Hype Machine has always been to find the best new music as quickly as possible. Now, your userbase is instead forced to wade through stale music in the false pursuit of discovery, rather than instead being presented with the *option* to do so should they *want* to.
June 18, 2012 9:13 am
There seems to be a common popular discontent with the new system here 🙂
So here’s my take when I look at this again in the big picture. Your attempt is an experiment to redefine “popularity” based on perception of the 50 most loved songs in a week. Popularity in music entails much more than just how people perceive a song. It also includes a plethora of marketing/social media as you clearly know. Coming from a website that makes their almost their entire profit based on marketing this seems most harmful to your revenue. Say an artist/agency(targeted in the music industry) purchases one of your full page ads which I’m sure isn’t cheap. Their goal is to boost the popularity of their product. In the case of an artist their music may jump to #1 which in your sense of popularity will fall to the bottom of the page. This is an obvious conflict of interest between the music industry marketing and hypem. In the short term I wouldn’t expect a drop in your revenue but after a while when your advertisers see their top campaigns drop to the bottom of your list you may find yourself reconsidering what popular really is. I like the idea of being different in how you define what is the “best” music but your popular section isn’t the best forum for experimenting just because an article from 2005 says so. Sorry if this sounds harsh but I prefer to give criticism from the heart.
June 18, 2012 1:49 pm
Absolutly love HM, BUT I’ll throw another vote in the pile for the option for a 1-50 count. I love the concept of what you’re doing, but I think a three day chart cycles does this pretty well already.
June 18, 2012 2:57 pm
The number of negative comments just hit 100. You’re waiting 900 more, so that you reach 1000?
More seriously, why are you doing this to us? I almost didn’t check the popular page this week, i just listened to my own playlist. I guess I’m not the only one.
June 18, 2012 8:24 pm
Not feeling this at all. This makes me want to check the site less. At least give us the option to organize the top 50 (1-50 or 50-1). Don’t just redo it and force us to go from 50 to 1.
June 19, 2012 7:41 am
Ugh. I don’t like this either. Please change it back. Sure, selection bias might be an issue, depending on how you define “popular,” but this isn’t the right fix. In survey design, we address selection bias by randomizing the choices, not by reversing the order.
Here’s an idea: put it in 1-40 order, but make every third song within that list a promising up-and-coming track from 41-60, or something like that. A compromise.
As others have said, I don’t have time to go through 50, so I either:
1) Manually play them in order
2) Go to Popular Last Week (which is in the proper order)
3) Use your site less
You’ll notice that not one of those options is “listen to the tracks from 50 to 1.”
June 19, 2012 5:01 pm
REALLY REALLY not feeling these changes!
100% dislike as a user and an up and coming artist!!!
Literally stopped using your site! 🙁
June 19, 2012 6:55 pm
If you guys wanted to generate more page views, you should just be honest about it.
June 19, 2012 9:08 pm
Just saying, I thought i would get used to it but since this modification I almost abandoned the website, it’s just too restrictive now. The popular page was perfect when you had like 30 minutes to discover new hype songs. It’s a bit ruined now.
June 20, 2012 9:01 am
Just going to throw my name on the pile here, I also do not care for this change for much. I do appreciate the theory behind the idea, but obviously many people come here in order to listen to the Top 10 songs, even with the “feedback” loop it seems to be quite amazingly received, and I hope you guys know that!
I have regressed to playing my previously favourited songs, and I have found that the quality of hypem.com/popular/3 has deteriorated slightly (in my opinion!). An option to revert the change would be greatly appreciated.
June 20, 2012 10:53 am
There should be a button, so that people can click “ascending/descending”.
I come to the popular page, but i often listen down as far as possible. I will definitely use the popular page the way it is, but you’re going to alienate users that already like the popular page the way it is.
June 20, 2012 12:13 pm
Why do I feel like you guys aren’t actually reading this? Everyone and their mother is complaining. SWITCH IT BACK.
June 20, 2012 8:41 pm
Here’s another idea, since you clearly are looking at this from a quantitative analysis point of view (based on your reference to the study linked): have you tried building multiple regression models, or other statistical methods, to approximate just how much influence play order affects the future outcomes of chart position? You must have a wealth of pre-chart-change data at your disposal – if your claims about cumulative advantage are true, I’d wager that you could create a good-fitting regression model with highly significant parameters. With that prediction model in hand, you could then use the beta coefficients to mathematically reduce the impact of play order on chart outcomes in the background, without screwing with the way your users clearly prefer to see the Popular chart displayed (if the comments in this thread are any indication). Shoot… send the data my way – I’ll sign an NDA – and I’ll take a crack at it gratis.
June 20, 2012 10:49 pm
So…… THIS IS WHY Hype Machine has been terrible for the past few weeks. I just noticed today the first track said “50” not “1”. Then some googling resulted in this page. Yeah, it all makes sense now. For the past few weeks all the “top tracks” have been pretty much crap, really old, etc. Now I realize I was listening to the bottom 50.
From a usability standpoint, this is a stupid idea, because if I want to hear the most popular songs at the moment, I play 1, but then it stops. Then I have to play #2, at which point it repeats #1 again. So the only way to hear the top ten tracks would be to click on 10, hit play, and let it play all the way to one. Ugh. ANNOYING.
BAD HYPE MACHINE! BAD! NO TREAT FOR YOU!
June 21, 2012 11:19 am
Alright guys, it’s been long enough for you to realize this isn’t a good thing. You tried something. It didn’t work. Now change it back, or give us the option to. When people go to the POPULAR page, they want the most POPULAR music. If we wanted random tracks that are say… 50th most popular, we’d go to the LATEST page. But we don’t. So we go to the POPULAR page. To find POPULAR music. So please, stop being foolish and recognize that you f*cked it up. I’m tired of scrolling all the way down to #10 and clicking play. And then when that’s over, scrolling all the way back down to #20, and trying to remember to go in and stop it before it replays the top 10. You’re either stubborn an unable to accept that you made a poor decision, or you make blog posts and never read the comments. Hopefully it’s the latter, because you’ll eventually see this page.
June 21, 2012 4:27 pm
Yea this is a rare case of Hype outthinking themselves, when they should realize it is the beautiful simplicity of the site that makes it so amazing.
Like many have said, at the very least give us a sort option so we don’t have to bow down to your fascist-cumulative-advantage-squashing propoganda!
June 21, 2012 5:19 pm
this is such a bad idea. I come to hypem because i have no time to find good music, not because i want to sift through songs to the nth degree. I like what people “love” here, so let me listen to it with ease.
June 22, 2012 9:42 am
This is a terrible idea! I come to popular to hear the most popular songs of the past few days, not to boost songs into becoming more popular by liking them. At the very least, you should give the option of starting from 1 as well as starting from 50.
CHANGE IT BACK! WE ALL LIKED IT BETTER BEFORE!
June 22, 2012 12:39 pm
Perhaps you could change it so we have the ability to sort it either way? I understand the reasoning behing “being popular leads to being more popular”, but I found better songs the other way by far. Seriously no comparison. I get stuck listening to meandering muck this way.
I doubt the majority of us have time to listen through 50 songs to pick out the good ones.
June 22, 2012 1:27 pm
Oh, and just perusing the the comments above it seems that most people are very much against this change. And yes, I’m sure there is a PDF out there demonstrating “those that are opposed are more likely to be vocal”. But with TuneIn radio, Pandora, and all the other music options out there do you really want to alienate part of your audience?
Remember, we I came here because we weren’t getting what we wanted somewhere else (in my case PMA hawking the same crappy bands’ crappy songs), and we will go elsewhere when the same happens here!
June 22, 2012 1:36 pm
its cutting off for me @ 30 – can’t see the rest.
June 22, 2012 2:31 pm
I actually think its a great idea… I always preferred the smaller bands at the bottom because it wasn’t decked out with remixes and allowed me to discover small artists with unique sounds. I totally agree with the change, but l do like also someone who mentioned it filters our own “hearts” out the list so we can see even more new music, but I also agree we should have a most popular 10 songs of the day, that would be awesome.
Usually the number 1 song isn’t that great, and I always end up scrolling down to find new awesome music, so I love it! Give some love to the small artists everyone. I am one and I can see that they will benefit greatly from this system.
June 22, 2012 8:04 pm
omg, terrible change!!! first time, that hypem lost something special……. that means, that i will keep on scrolling down to hear the top ten, until hypem will have redone that strange change 😉
June 24, 2012 5:44 am
I don’t like it, especially b/c i can’t move on past 32…
June 24, 2012 11:56 am
I’m stuck at 31 as well. I thought it was because of Internet Explorer, but now it is happening to me on Firefox too!
It is one thing to force us to listen to the 50th most popular song instead of the MOST popular song….but it is much worse when you have obvious defects that prevent some people from hearing what you came here for in the first place
June 25, 2012 11:29 am
I’d like to see a sort option as well. Having 50 at the top is really annoying. Also, I found in Chrome and Safari that a hard refresh COMMAND + SHIFT + R will allow you to get past 31. Infinite scrolling sometimes gets hung up, this should resolve it.
June 25, 2012 1:07 pm
Yeah I personally dont like this either.
It’s another instance of someone pushing their MO on us. Just like the old iPhone app used to not let you search, nor look at popular. Your only choice was to get random songs to help ‘expand our minds’. If I wanted to expand my mind i’d choose the random function, just like if I wanted to listen to the #50 most popular song I’d personally select to change the order.
Listen to what the customer wants! It’s confusing that I click on “popular” just to see the 50th most popular song… is that what i clicked on? No, I wanted to see the MOST popular songs, not the #50th most popular.
Again, like the app, I think your heart is in the right place, but again this is another example of the developer/author pushing their MO on the customer, not actually delivering what we want.
Frustrating! SO difficult to see the #1.
Please help!
June 25, 2012 2:51 pm
Not cool. Change it back.
June 25, 2012 4:46 pm
In the interest of giving you as much feedback as possible, I’m echoing the general sentiment that I’d prefer to go through the popular charts from #1 down, so I’d support having the option. I find plenty of gems near the bottom of the popular chart, but I look around #50 only when I have more time on my hands.
Also, ever since the scroll-next page development, the scrolling has had a tendency to get stuck, and since I now have to scroll all the time, it’s annoying (and hypem has always been the best in part because it’s simpler and easier to use).
Please change it back or let the user choose?
June 25, 2012 7:27 pm
Can’t see any tracks past 32! Please let us change the order if we want to.
June 25, 2012 9:58 pm
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the quality of the top (bottom?) songs in Popular has gone down dramatically since this change. Originally I was enthusiastic about this change, but now it’s really not worth listening to the top tracks anymore. The great songs get buried among the okay songs that just got lucky.
June 26, 2012 11:17 am
@Tim, totally agree. Something changed in the last couple of days and now it’s the same songs on the bottom rung.
Please give us a way to re-order 1-50 or random (like we can with our hearted songs)
BTW- You guys rock, love the site. More options isn’t a bad thing!
June 26, 2012 11:28 am
Just as a tip you can get to the top ten popular songs quickly by adding a “/3” to the popular url like this “http://hypem.com/popular/3″(just figured this out)
June 27, 2012 11:36 am
Guys, thanks for all the bug reports, ideas and feedback.
We’ve corrected a bunch of issues that people were seeing with infinite scrolling (and disabled it for IE7/IE8 users, who can just page through the site normally).
We’ve also just added a way to re-sort the popular in any way you like, including a really fun shuffle view. Keep the feedback coming, let me know how this feels.
June 30, 2012 11:23 pm
Very good idea to allow us to choose whether we want 1-50 or 50-1. Thanks for listening to our concerns!
July 1, 2012 12:33 pm
Hello Anthony/HypeM Team,
Just a quick message to say thank you for listening and adjusting the site to meet the requirements of the users feedback.
Much better 🙂
July 2, 2012 5:10 am
Thanks for fixing it! Guess all the tweets convinced y’all?
July 2, 2012 8:58 am
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
Now if you’d only implement the “no explicit tracks” filter, I could leave HypeM playing all day at work and not be afraid to leave my desk. 😛
July 2, 2012 4:26 pm
Headphones, man, headphones. 🙂
July 2, 2012 5:00 pm
THank you.
Seriously, it means a lot when someone listens!!
July 2, 2012 8:22 pm
Want to echo the thanks, it is great to see that 1-50 there this morning 🙂 A permanent setting in the profile would be even more welcome, but that is pushing it! Shuffle is a great idea too, I greatly enjoy listening to my old favourites on shuffle.
Thanks again!
July 3, 2012 12:50 pm
Thank you! I was so happy to see the 1-50 option when I logged on today 🙂 Shuffle is a great choice too. I really appreciate a site that responds to it’s user base.
July 4, 2012 12:38 pm
Thanks y’all. You guys rock for listening to your users. Hoping for your continued success in 2012.
July 6, 2012 9:52 am
It really means a lot that you listen to users’ feedback like this. I’m going to keep promoting you guys as I have been. Rock on, hypemachine!
July 7, 2012 6:39 pm
Thank you for bringing back the 1->50 view!
Thank you for listening to us users!
HypeMachine rocks, keep up guys. :]
July 11, 2012 2:18 am
Thanks everyone! One more reason to love Hypem
August 1, 2012 6:22 pm