Hype Machine turned 12 last week! That’s a long time for any service, especially an independent one. How long have you been listening with us?
To celebrate, we’ve redesigned the site for better navigation and playback, and added a few new features.
We’ve also introduced a way to fund our work directly. With your support, we can continue to build new pathways for music discovery for many more years to come. Join us here.
Update May 20, 2017 We’ve reached our first goal of 1,000 supporters, our first step towards sustainability. Thank you! A lot of work is ahead, however – to continue developing the service we need at least 3,000 monthly supporters. Join us.
Update May 22, 2017 Read what our supporters are saying about Hype Machine.
Update July 21, 2017 We’ve reached our second goal of 3,000 supporters! Thank you!
You guys need to give back a least a small sampling of offline listening to get back my service. Getting rid of this feature and selling out, lost me.
I want the old hype machine back.
May 5, 2017 4:50 pm
I love the new design, altought it will take some getting used to it looks and feels neat <3. The only thing I;am not sold on is playbar on bottom of the page.
Hopefully i'll be able to support you guys in the future, you provide me with a soundtrack to my day to day.
May 6, 2017 1:11 pm
I agree with Mand, definitely preferred the play bar on the top of the screen. And I really miss the offline listening the way it used to be. I have the soundcloud playlist, but I was totally happy to pay for offline use through you guys.
May 7, 2017 9:50 pm
Mand & Will, it’s possible we can make the player bar’s location configurable a bit later. Overall, the change is responding to a design standard that has emerged with this UI component in nearly every music app, so the bottom location is much less surprising for everyone using the service.
Not much we can do with the offline mode, unfortunately – SoundCloud terms of use do not allow us to make it available.
May 7, 2017 10:50 pm
so there doesn’t appear to be any way to favorite tracks on the new mobile layout?
May 7, 2017 11:56 pm
Thank you for your work! hypem is a beautiful thing.
May 8, 2017 12:00 am
Thanks for the reply. Now that you mention it, the placement seems understandable, that said an ability to customize would be a godsend 😀
May 8, 2017 1:13 pm
Hi,
How do I select just a genre of music? This does seem to have disappeared.
Nigel
May 9, 2017 5:48 am
Nigel – it’s a submenu in http://hypem.com/latest now, near the [Remixes] [No Remixes] all the same genres are there too.
May 9, 2017 11:06 am
Loved the original Hype, even bought the app.
Then you changed it, added ads, and did nothing to show respect for my initial purchase.
Why should I give you any more money? I live in Manhattan, invite me for beers and we’ll talk.
-Ash
May 9, 2017 1:37 pm
I <3 Hypem and have used it for years. As others have mentioned, cutting the offline mode was a tough pill to swallow though </3
I can respect the business decision to prioritize Soundcloud integration over continuing the offline mode, but as a Canadian user with outrageously high cellular data charges, it means I can't use hypem nearly as much as I'd like.
also, some…. interesting… design choices with the new interface.
Nonetheless, amazing milestones to reach for an independent crew doing what you love. peace and respect!
May 9, 2017 5:08 pm
Get a grip.
May 9, 2017 9:03 pm
Always my #1 go to for new music, keep up the good work team
May 10, 2017 6:03 am
Have you folks considered setting up a patreon? Not a big fan of paypal subscribe and I also don’t love the idea of having more small monthly line items on my credit card.
This site is basically my exclusive source of new music so I am happy to support but patreon would be great so I could roll it in with the other online creatives I support.
May 12, 2017 1:10 pm
Would you consider adding an option to accept one-time payments?
Recurring revenue from subscriptions is great, but a lot of people are going to think twice before signing up for yet-another-subscription-service.
Now if you did subscriptions (ad-free) plus quarterly/annual funding drives (a la Wikipedia), you might find that a lot of people would be more willing to support you that way.
Just a thought.
May 12, 2017 5:44 pm
@Duncan, we’ve considered Patreon, but some parts of it didn’t fit for us. The core of the service is made around the work Youtube creators do, so things start to get strange if you are building something else. Certainly something I hope they can fix over time, these details have been piling up for me as a patron in their system.
@Ben, we are looking into that, but the one downside of the Funding Drive approach you mentioned is the overall overhead involved in running each one of those campaigns. For our small team or 3 this would leave limited time to developing new parts of the product, which is where the monthly approach is most helpful.
May 15, 2017 4:11 pm
Just writing to give feedback as a longtime user. Really like your service. There are a few pain points but I keep coming back.
I used to be on hypem.com almost every day at work or at home because I would discover so much new music. For the first few years it felt like I struck gold every visit. Now it takes me many, many visits to strike gold again. Maybe the mine is just running low on my type of gold. But it was really scary around 2014 when I noticed other services like Spotify, Pandora, Google Music, iTunes, etc. were exposing me to more new music faster than my favorite site.
Frustrations over time:
1. Popular charts were always oversaturated with three genres: indie rock, EDM, and rap. Wish I could filter certain genres or artists, like how I can filter out remixes. Also the genre tags need a major update.
2. With the increased popularity of Soundcloud-hosted streaming links, there are less blogs to engage and MP3s to download. This could also be a symptom of the dying music blog industry in general.
3. Simple common sense functions are missing from the mobile app, like a shuffle button for favorited songs.
4. I’ve had a LOT of songs disappear from my favorites list. Not just grey out, but completely vanish. I would be willing to pay a monthly HypeM subscription if those song names could somehow be recovered so I could purchase them.
I don’t think hypem.com today provides enough value to me as a service to merit a monthly subscription of more than a few dollars. Then I have to compare you alongside Google Music or Spotify and that’s just unfair. But I’d be willing to donate BIG BUX if there’s any way to recover all the favorited tracks purged from my account.
Also, I really like what you guys are doing with radiooooo.com. That one is really fun to pull out at parties!
Wish you guys the best, whatever the future holds.
May 16, 2017 5:37 pm
I agree with Ben at least in that you could make one-time donations possible. It should be fairly easy as you’ve already got PayPal set up. I’m not willing to sign up for another subscription service but I’d be more than happy to make a one-time donation.
May 22, 2017 6:22 am
I love how you continuously ignore the complaints from users who have already purchased your iOS app and supported you.
I would have NEVER purchased the mobile app had I known I would still have to see ads anyway.
June 10, 2017 1:45 pm
Jesse, you are right – the ads were a bad experience in the app, and we’ve removed them months ago.
June 20, 2017 11:11 am
I want to know why SoundCloud is not funding you. Get rid of them or explain so I can fund you cause I do love Hype, though I wish offline mode was still a feature along with some of my favorite tunes now disabled. Love you guys, just trying to help you connect with supporters like me who are confused. YOU ARE SOOO MUCH BETTER THAN SOUNDCLOUD <3
July 4, 2017 1:53 am
I’m a long time user and I happily purchased the Android App long ago to remove Ads. Now offline mode is gone and the Ads came back. :-O
I certainly don’t mind making an occasional donation, but I’m not willing to pay a monthly subscription fee. If offline mode came back, then maybe I’d consider a low monthly fee, so I wouldn’t chew through my cellular data. That was a REALLY GOOD feature!
July 11, 2017 5:17 pm