We hear you. Here is what happened to the Flash player:
While we were designing the new site, our biggest goal was to showcase the content bloggers are creating to make music discovery more engaging. This is why we get up in the morning and work on Hype Machine.
We looked at our flash player and saw that it was great at:
– Playing music, skipping tracks.
We also saw that it really sucked at:
– Displaying clearly visible links to blogs, and buying relevant music.
– Showing any content at all from the matching blog post. In fact, that just wasn’t in the player.
Given what we are up to, this player doesn’t work. It was the best we could do at the moment, but did not fully address what we are out to do.
Right now, we also see that the way audio works on the current site has problems:
– Songs don’t reliably continue playing once the previous one is done
– Not always clear what song is playing
We are working on a way to address these issues and do both: have an amazing listening experience and showcase what bloggers are writing.
Don’t stop with your feedback.
The flash player was great. In case you haven’t noticed until now, people come to this page to hear new music, and if they enjoy it download it from the blogs (like it or not). Best of all was the ability to search for a given artist and create an automated playlist of him/her/them alone.
But I guess “buying relevant music” is what it is all about, and that’s why you messed up the best feature at this site. Too sad.
October 17, 2007 3:56 pm
I actually enjoyed the switch to being able to read the content. It’s good to showcase the blog more. What I’m really note enjoying:
1) Not displaying all tracks from blog posts – the “X more tracks in the post” link is not a substitute – what I love(d) about hypemachine was previewing all the tracks from a post without having to download them. It seems counterintuitive anyways to make people download before they buy if there is a chance to stream.
2) Not nearly enough posts per page. (Maybe I just haven’t found the feature that allows you to show 100 posts per page)
3) Erratic skipping of tracks/not always progressing etc
Other than those gripes I think it is a cool system
October 17, 2007 4:01 pm
Also! It would be GREAT if you could hit a button that would expand the post. Like palms out sounds does. Navigating to a new page from the one that’s playing music (or even popping up a new window) is a PAIN in the ass. So if I want to keep reading the post it’d be great to hit a button that would show me the rest of the post without switching pages.
October 17, 2007 4:04 pm
OK last one – same thing goes for the “X more tracks in this post thing” – hitting that link, if it expanded the rest of the tracks onto the SAME PAGE, would be totally cool. It’s just that it navigates you away from the page that’s playing the music that’s so obnoxious.
October 17, 2007 4:09 pm
Congrats on the new HypeM launch, looks good!
I do miss a few aspects of the flash player though, namely, a) playing multiple tracks one after another (ex. search for radiohead, play all) b) being able to control the volume because it can be all over the map and c) having it a separate window so I can keep up my ADD-adled browsing.
October 17, 2007 4:13 pm
Colin: Regarding your last point, I’m not sure that would help to sufficiently support the bloggers who spend their own time writing. Without all their great content this site wouldn’t exist, so we like to encourage you to check out the original source of the posts as often as possible.
October 17, 2007 4:13 pm
“- Showing any content at all from the matching blog post. In fact, that just wasn’t in the player.”
That’s part of what I enjoyed. I didn’t have to see all of the garbage blog posts associated with a song that I didn’t enjoy. I could just skip it. However IF there was a song that I liked I would almost always right click on the player and choose ‘Read about this song…’ and would be directed to the blog posting.
As far as “buying relevant music” I see where you’re coming from. Gotta make a buck somehow ehh… You just have to decide if cutting this functionality is going to get you so many more referral/sales that will compensate for the clear loss in readership/views.
October 17, 2007 4:17 pm
Taylor, but that’s the point of having the “expand the content” button rather than navigating to the site. I always go to the site anyways when I download the track. My main gripe is that it stops the music (before they were always separate windows). Plus, before, all tracks were played in the flash player! Thanks for the response.
October 17, 2007 4:20 pm
Why couldn’t you just have your flash player expand the line (the part that lists the title and artist and is highlighted when that track is playing) of the track that’s currently playing and put the text of the associated blog entry in there, along with a link to that blog post? Then, when the player moves on to the next file, the line that was just playing collapses and the next line expands with the new track and blog post info.?
I am (probably like a lot of your visitors) more interested in hearing new music than in the personal musings of the bloggers. Granted, without them, I couldn’t hear the track. But I guess that just means I’ll have to find my new music elsewhere. I’m disappointed to hear this was your main interest, after all. I thought your site could do a lot to encourage people to expand their music tastes and, ideally, to buy more music from artists they really like. As it is, though, the paean to someone’s girlfriend’s dead pet just doesn’t interest me.
October 17, 2007 4:25 pm
Love your blog. But put the flash player back, or anything that lets you automatically make a playlist of something. That was a great feature.
October 17, 2007 4:32 pm
Lame. Looks great new player doesn’t seem to play very well and the lack of popup player has got me on imeem. sorry.
October 17, 2007 4:34 pm
I can’t seem to get any music samples to play, in any of the listings. I miss the flash player. Hear good song –> Investigate blog entry is the way to go, not the other way around.
October 17, 2007 4:43 pm
What happened is that the Hype Machine caved into the criticism from the bloggers.
–
Maybe someone else will build what the Hype Machine used to do and fill the void. I even wouldn’t mind if it had advertising. Someone stands to make a lot of money if they can make an ad driven alternative site that works like the old Hype Machine!
October 17, 2007 4:49 pm
Have to agree with EmmEff. I come to Hypem to find new music. If I find a track I like, I’ll always read the relevant blog post, sometimes even bookmark the site if it seems to be on the same wavelength as me. Heaven help me I might even buy a CD if I really like something. I’m not interested in reading blogs about stuff I don’t like. This was the beauty of the player – there’s so much c**p out there but the player was a reliable filter to get you into the stuff you want to hear and you could take it from there. Said it before, the player was your hook. Take away the hook and you lose your audience.
Despite this, have to respect that it’s your site and your vision to do want you want with. However, the net is about choice and I’ll choose to go to the first site I find which replicates what you used to do.
thanks for the good stuff
N
October 17, 2007 4:51 pm
Great idea encey!
Yeah, why couldn’t you just add the bloggers notes to the old website and flash player?
October 17, 2007 4:51 pm
I have recommended our site to literally at least 27 1/2 of my friends. But now I can’t, because the reason I came here has been destroyed. I guess we all thought wow, how great that somebody finally figured out how to help you explore the wide world of music, manuevering in the direction of genres you probably will like, and they’re not out for a buck, but rather have circumvented the lockstep of the industry, a bit of freedom still alive in the world, a place to explore and loose yourself in, a place where I have discovered many many artists… a site even my workplace doesn’t block (like youtube) and I do not read the blogs. Not everyone does, you know,
well, R.I.P., hypem player, I won’t visit here much til I hear you’ve been resurrected
Do I need to start a petition?
Your new red heart looks so broken to me now
October 17, 2007 4:54 pm
It seems to me that you guys were unaware of how we were actually using your site, considering that all those reasons are now gone. I’ll stick around for a while to see if any changes are made in response to all our complaints, but after that I’ll just have to find somewhere else. Speaking of which, anyone know of a site that does what hype machine used to?
October 17, 2007 5:03 pm
I really like the new site. It’s much cleaner looking. I’m missing the flash player a lot though. For the following reasons:
1) I could play the popular blog tunes, and listen to them in the background, and then visit the blog if I liked the tune.
2) I could listen to a group of songs by a new band or artist I was checking out, or even a load of different versions of the same track.
3) People could listen to everything that had been indexed off my blog, a nice feature that I had a lot of feedback on.
4) I could sometimes just visit the site, and listen to what was being updated, kinda like the radio.
In all cases, I’d listen to the flash player, and then hit back on the site to read the blog if I liked what I was hearing.
You really should bring it back in some form, it made the Hype Machine experience unique. Lot’s of different web music search engines allow you to listen to individual tracks – the flash player was part of the HM’s USP.
October 17, 2007 5:05 pm
Oh boo- here I just found this site and was telling all my friends about it and the player’s gone.
boo I say, and NOT boo-urns.
(for the record I too visited the blog sites,for songs & music I liked.)
October 17, 2007 5:26 pm
OK, so it’s like Candid Camera and at some point you’re going to say ‘only kidding folks’ and put the flash player back aren’t you. Aren’t you?
October 17, 2007 5:27 pm
Put that player back on this site where it belongs!!
or else!!!
we can not live another day without it!
heart,
Ken
October 17, 2007 5:40 pm
I’m all for a new image but you’ve fundamentally changed what your site does. Now it doesn’t do what I, and seemingly 95% of your audience, want it to do. It seems like an unfortunate meeting of bullets and feet.
October 17, 2007 5:47 pm
It seems to me you’ve sacrificed user convenience to try and make users click around on the website, in the hopes of driving up both your page views for more ad revenue (i.e. make it a “sticky” website) and your referrals to other blogs (to keep the blogs happy and participating). It’s too bad.
October 17, 2007 6:17 pm
ooh no! bloody hell, I couldn’t play the music, it gave errors.
the flash player was my fave feature.
it is all ordinary and sad now.
jen
October 17, 2007 9:25 pm
Some of these commnts are pretty hilarious.
I think it’s fair to so that Hype Machine created a new type of music listener, or even different than the obvious fan who ‘finds music on blogs.’ More of a ‘GIMME DEM MP3s’ type of listener.
I feel like when people are asking you to put the flash player back up, they are subconsciously dealing with their frustration of not being able to DL the mp3s directly from Hype Machine.
October 17, 2007 9:43 pm
You’ve been removed as my homepage. Good luck with this new direction.
October 17, 2007 10:03 pm
Carles – Well I for one always hit “Open in new window” and went to the blog directly to download mp3s and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
October 17, 2007 10:19 pm
What Krista said. Here’s how I used to use HypeM:
* Scroll through everything posted since I last checked;
* Open the blog listing from which that mp3 was posted;
* Read entry;
* D/l mp3 if interested;
* Click on the blog’s homepage to see what else that blogger likes if they like what I like.
Here’s how I use it now:
* Get bored and frustrated at the lack of proper listings of what mp3s have been posted;
* Give up after several pages.
This isn’t even about the Player for me. Never used it. I’ve been using HypeM for nearly three years. If you don’t do something to restore functionality in three days, you’ll lose me and, I’ll wager, an uncomfortable chunk of your former loyal followers, more than your buddies in advertising will want to accomodate. Don’t get greedy.
October 17, 2007 10:48 pm
Here’s a thought. Take palmsout as an example again. On some days they have maybe 10 or 20 tracks in a post. It used to be that the flash player would let me preview all of them before deciding if I wanted to download/buy. Now, you guys only show 3 tracks. In order for me to preview them now, I have to download each track from palmsout, then delete it if I don’t like it. This creates two problems – 1) More load on palmsout (unless the flash player streamed it from their server and 2) I’m much less likely to go through the trouble of downloading/listening/deleting to preview before I buy. So you’re getting less money out of it as well. You need a way to play ALL tracks from the within the hypemachine page… it will make everyone happier!
October 17, 2007 11:20 pm
You can find the Flash player still working (at least the last time I checked, the kids are in bed now so no more music) here:
Don’t know why it still works from there but hope it still will for a while….
I just like to set it to a particular artist and let it play while I, er, work…
October 17, 2007 11:35 pm
Well… what happened there??? Let’s try it again:
www(dot)foxytunes(dot)com/planet
October 17, 2007 11:37 pm
Bah, I thought that maybe after a day of you guys getting reamed on the lack of the pop up flash player I could come back and it would be there. Alas, a lame post about wanting to include more blogger content. I call BS on that and I think almost everyone here knows it. To hell with what 99% of what some idiot blogger has to say – I came here for the freaking music. It used to be I’d hear a song I liked, I’d likely visit the blogger site that had the song, and in many cases I BUY the freaking CD. Now this site is useless. Completely useless. You aren’t my homepage any longer. You aren’t even bookmarked any longer. R.I.P
PS – have to say it again – YOU BLEW IT.
October 17, 2007 11:54 pm
The most important thing missing from your new format is a seek bar for the track that is currently playing. I really can’t be bothered to sit and listen through the 1 minute intro on every track I’m browsing. You need full audio controls, not just a play button.
My advice – have a full featured flash audio player at the top of the page that lists what song is playing and has a seek bar. When you click play on a post it just jumps to that track. Ideally it can pop-out for people who like to listen while they surf.
October 18, 2007 12:19 am
I guess the only solution is a pop up player that shows exactly what it would on the page, except that it ‘pops up’, giving the HypeM user more illusion of control over his or her track seeking abilities.
October 18, 2007 12:41 am
What’s going on?? You had me all excited like it was christmas about this new site and then santa didn’t even show up. I, like everyone else on here, am really missing the flash player and the functional music discovering abilities it used to have. Have you guys sold out??
October 18, 2007 1:12 am
Hype Machine : flashplayer-less interface :: Facebook : minifeed
Why can’t we just trust the people making the decisions to know what’s best for us?
-the lesson Generation Y learned after learning to love life with the minifeed
October 18, 2007 1:34 am
It’s cause we are all experts ;P
October 18, 2007 1:45 am
Hey — I was unhappy about the los of the flash player at first, but I’m rapidly becoming accustomed to the new feel of the site, and I find that I am, as you folks expected, enjoying and appreciating the experience of hearing music via Hype more than I did before. I’m losing the GIMME DEM MP3S attitude Carles talked about that’s been plaguing internet music — Hype has now combined the good parts of Pandora and Last-fm with a smoother interface and greater searchability. And I appreciate the respect for bloggers that’s shown. So I’m sorry for all the criticism you’ve been getting, and, while I understand it, I’m going to stick up for your decision.
People posting on this page: will you calm down a bit? The creators of this site aren’t paid. They don’t actually have a service obligation to you. They’re doing what they want to do with their project, and your lucky that they happen to want to do something like this. It must bloody hurt to have you lot be so acerbic. OK, so you disagree with their choice and motivation; that’s fine. But you don’t need to be so mean about it, eh?
October 18, 2007 2:28 am
I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE THE NEW SITE.
Keep it up, nevermind those wankers, as they said, they are gone! Good riddance.
Blog music is about blogs too you know, if it wasn’t for them there wouldn’t be any hype. I feel this is a much better format for the site. I just wish it was a bit smaller!
October 18, 2007 3:27 am
Unfortunately, what will happen is someone else will create a site offering the same services that utilize the old features that everybody misses (and obviously loves). In essence, a competitor will adapt and improve.
October 18, 2007 3:30 am
Yeah I’m glad to hear you guys are working on getting it going! I’ll be stoked when the new flash player comes out.
Until then, I will keep coming back for news and other shenanigans.
October 18, 2007 3:34 am
oh, and Carles said: “Why can’t we just trust the people making the decisions to know what’s best for us?”
You do hear how that sounds, right? I’m hoping you were being facetious.
October 18, 2007 3:37 am
I appreciate post flash player Hype Machine for what it is.
October 18, 2007 4:07 am
I think its really great what you guys are trying to do and I’m sure youre aware of this, but this new improvement to your site is actually going to take a bad hit because of the inability to pull up tracks from a single user. I guess Im gonna have to go back to Myspace. haha jk.
October 18, 2007 4:26 am
Krista — try fairtilizer.com
October 18, 2007 4:43 am
Fantastic site, wonderful idea, totally support everything you folk do.
BUT this new site…
Honestly, guys, there needs to be a “Play All” function at the very least, if ot a return of the flash popup. I used to read blogs or listen to the (shock horror!) radio, hear something new, go straight to HypeM.com, search and play a few tracks.
THEN I’d visit blogs, learn about what I was listening to, find other new stuff I liked and repeated the process. I could sit here at work and discover new bands at the same time.
This has been taken away from me. 🙁
October 18, 2007 5:06 am
bring back flash player…plzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
dont spoil the best thing in music internet,,,when i first show hype i thought that it was the best site on the net,,,,dont make us sad,,,flash player come back….
October 18, 2007 5:23 am
This site loses entirely its specificity without the player. Gone is all of the pleasure of looping into a series of songs you haven’t heard then scrambling through blogs to contextualize the listening experience. Its kind of shocking that there was ever really any doubt that this wouldn’t almost instantaneously cause people to defect from your site.
October 18, 2007 8:25 am
Franz – Thanks for the suggestion! I’m checking it out right now.
H.G. – I think people are coming across as ‘mean’ because we’ve lost one of our favorite sites for no good reason really, and are angry about it.
October 18, 2007 8:30 am
PEOPLE COME TO THIS SITE TO FIND NEW/COOL MUSIC. The only way to find out if something is worth listening to/buying is to listen to it. Your flash player made this very easy.
October 18, 2007 10:33 am
bring back the player as an optional feature !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 18, 2007 10:36 am
I am from India(Bangalore). I was one of the oldest visitors to your site (even before the site had ads on it..or you got media coverage..before you were digged, metafiltered or reddit’d, or even before you got this new fancy url..remember the hyphenated url?). I’ve passed the site along to umpteen number of friends here who are interested in all kinds of new and old English music. Many of them still thank me after a year or so when we meet. Here in India, it’s difficult to keep up with new music coming from West. Most of MTV here is a joke. You were my MTV/VH1/Last.fm..all in one.
I’ve never commented or wrote to you earlier. I am one of those silent satisfied users of the site doing my bit my word of mouth. But this move of yours of eliminating flash player has just forced my hand to give my feedback.
You eliminated the best thing which was on your site. I used to come here for the flash player. Listen to songs. And then if I liked it, then yes, most definitely read the blog listing that song to find out more about that artist/song. This is the sequence which most of us (looking from comments to this post) employed while on this site. Listen –>Read–>(Bookmark/buy/whatever).
All you have now is a bunch of music blogs aggregated in one place which most of us can anyways do in our RSS readers.
Please..please..please reintroduce the flash player. That is the hook of this site. Without the hook I’m afraid myself and many more like me won’t stick around for long.
Though I agree, this is ultimately your site. You can do whatever you want to do with it. But if you care about your visitors and your community, please reconsider your decision. Infact, frankly speaking I never encountered all these problems which you mentioned about the flash player. I’ve used it when I was in US, in Bombay, Bglore..on crappy dialup and broadband available here. It has just worked for me. Always. I am quite surprise you saying about all these problems of the player.
You can make out from feedback itself that hardly anybody is commenting about the new look/features which you’ve introduced. Personally I am ambivalent about it. Haven’t seen much though. Most of us came for flash player. Without the player hypeMachine is not the same. If you are short on funds in terms of bandwidth and effort for running this site, please let us know. I’ll most definitely not hesitate to paypal you whatever I can. I guess most of us feel the same.
Maybe, all good things must come to an end. Or maybe not?
October 18, 2007 10:51 am
1. Allow a pop-up as an OPTION would be better than nixing it altogether.
2. When a song isn’t streaming quick enough, it jumps to the next song in the line. That stinks. So I hear 3 seconds of every song.
3. Searchable playlist creation was amazing, why get rid of it?
1+2+3 = Not coming to Hype Machine any more. It was fun while it lasted though, thanks guys!
October 18, 2007 10:59 am
It seems in achieving *your* biggest goal you forgot to respect/honor/(acknowledge) the Hype Machine users’ biggest goals – as noted above.
The Flash player was the essence of what made your site so great. The current site is not so different from Elbows or other aggregators – why stay with it?
Please bring the player back!
October 18, 2007 10:59 am
man, i loved the flash player–it allowed me to keep browsing while something was playing. the volume control was useful too. i was always able to read what the blogger had to say by clicking the read button. now i guess it’d work better if you can allow us to list more than 30 results in a page, so that i can see everything in one go. also, something like collapsible tabs would work better too, rather than having the bloggers’ content clutter up the page. lastly, please list all the songs that they have instead of just having one!
October 18, 2007 11:11 am
The redesign does look good, but:
1. Please bring back the Flash player
2. Screen caps for each blog would be nice.
I’ve had lots of difficulty with my blog’s feed, in trying to get it to show entire posts rather than post title/tune title. The screen cap on my “old” page helped give readers and listeners some idea of what my blog is about. Now that there’s zero graphic content on my blog’s page, that’s no longer true.
Thanks muchly for all the work you do to help promote music blogs – and, the reason behind it all, the musicians whose work we feature!
Best!
Spinning
October 18, 2007 12:45 pm
The design looks great but I liked being able to skim and listen to tracks quickly or search for an artist and get a quick overview of their sound.
When I want to read blog summaries I use elbo.ws, I like their layout as far as that goes better than the new hype.
October 18, 2007 1:49 pm
From the Department of Redundancy: How in the hell did you decide to remove the flash player. Like many others here, I used to listen to tunes on the player and often make a decision to buy something I heard. I also wold hear a new artist somewhere else and then immediately come to HypeM to check out more tunes by that artist. You have pretty much eliminated any reason for me to visit anymore.
October 18, 2007 2:45 pm
the flash player was the best thing..can u bring something similar to it back, if not it…
October 18, 2007 3:00 pm
I’m a relatively new but constant visitor of the Hype Machine. So first of all – many thanks and much admiration for all your efforts.
I’ve been reading almost all of the comments since the relaunch of the site[mostly hoping for feedback from you] and have to say I’ve seen very little true meanness. Sure, some are more forthright and expressive of their disappointment and anger at seeing a great service BASICALLY EVISCERATED in many fundamental functions – but providing a service goes both ways and I would think, to have a viable service, you’d want the straight talk, just as you would from a true friend. And hopefully that’s a large part of what was/is going on here – friends sharing the beauty and magic of the music.
I agree with previous posts that hearing the songs is the foundation of the experience for what seems to be the very large majority of your visitors AND ultimately what the bloggers are after too. If you’re ultimately JUST after my hard earned money – who’s really crying in their milk?
Admittedly, I have almost zero expertise in web design and what you have generously been creating and providing here, other than what I have experienced elsewhere on other web sites. But it seems entirely possible to have a pop-up player that accomplishes the needs/desires of all concerned – just for an example, the new Amazon pop up player has a lot of additional information available if you so desire. Perhaps this is partially a proprietary creation but I assume you have access to such skills.
I obviously don’t know the true motivations and goals at the source of your redesigning the site but in the absence of much information / feedback from you, there seems a bit too much “social engineering” going on for many of us, who also appreciate function over form.
Music lovers are in general a loyal bunch, but in the end it’s the music we’re loyal to and we’ll follow it to where it’s the easist and most enjoyable to experience and I hope you bring us back with what we need to have this experience.
thanks again.
P.S. Where’s this big podcast button???
October 18, 2007 3:13 pm
The Flash led to a lot of music purchase by allowing me to listen to expired links. Now I’m to jam up my folders on a daily basis with MP3’s on a blogger’s advice ? Counter intuitive from the music industry and artists perspective.
October 19, 2007 12:41 am
i never used the flash player anyway i like the new site!
October 19, 2007 1:48 am
I like this new version and I understand the reason behind to drop flash player.
Good work there.
Keep improving.
Simone
October 19, 2007 9:44 am
wow, guess this is a business lesson learned the hard way, isn’t it?
the lesson:
* know how people are using your site, especially what draws them there in the first place. I think the flash player was a huge part of that.
* don’t take a good feature away without adequate replacement. also known as if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I won’t be using the site until the situation is remedied.
October 19, 2007 12:31 pm
I think most people where hoping for an even better player with more features, in that regard the new site is a step backwards for many.
October 19, 2007 12:44 pm
Good music makes “music discovery more engaging”, not what some random bloggers have to say about a given. The new design was a step in the wrong direction. You have lost credibility with your former audience, but have you’ve probably found new friends in the top management of the music industry. I won’t come back until the flash player is back.
October 19, 2007 1:25 pm
Hmm, sorry if this has been addressed already, however two thoughts.
First: Where’s the volume control?!?!
Second: for me this site was always music driven, not necessarily article driven. I would look around primarily by artist or song, or more importantly, music discovery by listening to the songs. After that, i would move down and find the blog or entry and read on further. So to me, making the site more musically driven is good–but still including all your content is really good too. is it possible? hahah hopefully 🙂
Rock on guys! I am still in love with the site!
October 19, 2007 1:26 pm
If this is what “selling out” is like, it’s pretty unprofitable.
October 19, 2007 1:32 pm
all of our ‘dissatisfied customers’ can expect a full refund of their purchase price in the mail
October 19, 2007 2:18 pm
The Hype Machine kicks ass. Anthony, Taylor, Zoya and Scott – you guys fucking rock! I totally dig on the new design and know that it’s only going to get better. It’s truly mind boggling how you can work so hard on something and people just bitch about it…. You’ll never please everyone, but you’ve guys have definitely upped the ante in this space… Kudos on an amazing job!
October 19, 2007 7:02 pm
I’m not really an internet trawler for music, or really anything for that matter, and I used to just listen to mainstream on the radio – until the hype machine. I used it to listen to music. Now the flash player is gone, and it sucks.
Bring back the player for those simple folks who don’t give a crap about bloggers (apart from being eternally grateful for them posting the songs here…heh)
…please?
October 19, 2007 8:16 pm
The writing is way too big, it feels like the site is catering for those with bad vision.
The flash player was awesome, if you insist on the blog orientated site, have it as an option at least? It may not have been flashy (pardon the pun), but it was small, discreet and extremely useful!
October 19, 2007 8:22 pm
just had to add my two cents and i hope you read this hypem.
you have to bring the flash player back, period. for the sanity of ppl like me and for the future of your business.
its disguisting the you took it away just to make more bucks, thats soooooooo cuntish you know
October 19, 2007 11:44 pm
Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player. Bring back the player.
Please.
October 20, 2007 3:10 am
I can only concur with the other posters: aesthetic enhancement (and this is a really subjective opinion) doesn’t make up for the technological loss… PLEASE put the flash player back! You can still work on a way to improve it but PLEASE don’t remove it until you’ve found a better solution.
Now my question is: are you under the pressure of some higher authority that clearly “””””advised””””” you to remove the player???
The main goal on here is to encourage diversity and discovery, and this is what you managed to do, until now…
Now,I’m sorry to say that most albums nowadays just contain 1, 2 or 3 interesting tracks and the rest is just commercial crap, or just….simple crap…
The flash player was the best way to create playlists of artists or blogs for us to forge our own opinion of such and such an artist or album. Then if we really like it, we buy it.
Your new system makes it too complicated to get to an overall appreciation of what is good …or not.
If you are under NO COMMERCIAL PRESSURE, just put the flash player back. If you ARE, JUST STATE IT CLEARLY on your home page.
Thanks for all you’ve done until now and keep up the (past) good work.
October 20, 2007 3:20 am
I am a little disappointed to see that you guys removed the application to simply play thru the list of tracks that comes up from a search. This is essential for ease of use, and means you don’t have to keep coming back to the page.
October 20, 2007 8:06 am
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease bring us back the Flash player !!!!!!!!!
October 20, 2007 12:20 pm
bring back my flashplayer… i can’t live another day without it.
October 20, 2007 2:11 pm
Really sorry, but this is just so wrong. What did your beta testers say?!?
I am so saddened, since this was my favourite website. It was the easiest way to find and listen good music and eventually read good blogs and bookmark them. The new site is to user extremely unfriendly, I hope you will be able to realise that. You will keep fans only until better replacement emerges. Please fix it back.
Design? Lovely yes, but as far as I’m concerned I would keep coming to your old site even if it had a dead rabbit as a background picture.
October 20, 2007 3:22 pm
I enjoy the new look of the site, however I think your philosophy behind removing the flash player is poor and you’ve failed to keep the actual user in mind. Most of your points here are forced and not a legitimate excuse. All fine and dandy if you want your site to be exclusively a blog search engine and don’t mind alienating a good portion of your users.
I would have preferred a statement that simply said it went against the mission of the site. At least then I could believe you, you would have your dignity, and my respect. Actually, don’t be surprised to see a Firefox extension that walks through the search results pulling URLs to stream the mp3s, putting the flash player in the hands of a third party.
October 20, 2007 7:05 pm
put flash thign back, ur hits will decline coz of it
October 20, 2007 9:19 pm
We thought this post would answer well as to why we made these changes. There is nothing to add to what’s here, this is it. If after reading it you still don’t believe us, there is little we can do. Though, feel free to write anytime.
October 20, 2007 9:30 pm
1. I love the user accounts
a. Saving favorite blogs – I always wanted to view the latest tracks from all my favorite blogs, without having to check their hype machine pages separately. Now that’s possible.
b. Easily share favorite blogs and tracks with friends — awesome.
2. No more flash player / playlists
a. I think the complaints are a bit too extreme and probably coming from people who haven’t understood the point and the beauty of Hype Machine. Although I must say that I click through to blog posts just as frequently now as I did before.
b. I really used to enjoy the ability to listen though the whole set of a blog’s mp3 posts via winamp. I would listen at work, and then if I liked the track, I’d find its position on that blog’s HypeM page, click through to the blog post, and then, yes, actually read the post, while downloading the mp3. I can no longer do that, but it’s hard to complain when Hype Machine still does so much for me and for music + the music blogosphere.
Here’s a long overdue *thank you* to the HypeM team!
Mike
October 21, 2007 1:51 am
One more thing I forgot in the last post: The lack of ability to skip forward when sampling a song is a problem. I check out a lot of dance/electro music, and as we know, there can be huge lead-ins. The ability to skip around a track offers a more efficient experience and reduces the risk that users will reject a good song just because they didn’t like or didn’t have the patience for it’s long build-up.
Thanks
October 21, 2007 2:23 am
Woosh, there went my reason for coming to hypem.com. A nice place to search for “new” music and listen to it. Only secondary, and not very frequently, was the joy of reading more about it in the blogs.
Point is, I don’t want to read about new music, I want to listen to it, have a taste of it before eventually buying it..
What I like to read about, is artists I’m familiar with, learning more about them, being guided to unknown releases and histories from bloggers who knows.
But, as I’ve said: The reason I came here, was for listening to new stuff. And that I can’t no more. Away I go, then.
October 21, 2007 7:02 pm
[…] (hypemachine blog) […]
October 22, 2007 6:24 am
I turned this on today after a really stressed out meeting at work to find this, at first i was happy to see a little color…….that ended quickly. there is only one reason you use this site and that is to easily find new music. The ease of use is gone and therefore the reason to use this site. I can go around and “heart” every blog I listen to but that does not solve my problem. The flashplayer was the primary feature 99% of the people here used. I know I am repeating what others said.. but…power in numbers. I also understand you need to make money too, we all do, lets face it, but to remove the reason this site excists and make another music site is simply foolish. Please include the flashplayer or someone will reproduce it elsewhere and people will flock there, it’s that simple. If i knew code you bet your ass i would waste a day of work making that and replicating what you did. you had a semi perfect product which was brought to users from a person with like minded needs. Now your needs have changed but the mass has not and you have alienated your users. I’m sure that slowly your uniques will go up and people will come on board because that is what happens with social networks, but this was not a social network. I work in online advertisng and have to deal with tons and tons of sites who care more about their CPMs, Unique Users and comscore number and less about their content. this was not that kind of site, until last week…content is king
October 22, 2007 12:46 pm
I was really excited to see that you guys had redesigned but then quickly became _really_ sad cos all the cool features had gone. I feel completely lost and bit abandoned with this all new clunky interface.
I miss the previous HypeM. A lot. Bring it back. :/
October 26, 2007 8:52 am
I’m listening to the Hype Machine much more than I ever did. Knowing that I can come back to listen to my favorites made a huge difference.
I would love to have longer pages and a shuffle function.
October 27, 2007 2:41 pm
What’s happened with hypemachine? Till now it has been a good solid tool to me. Good for getting and sharing information, hear and judge, work with, buying perhaps something somewhere later on. Plain and useful, perhaps to improve in details.
Now this is a toy for old children. You may keep it in a bag and…
O Lord…
Kutte
October 27, 2007 5:12 pm
I think it really stinks that you got rid of the popup flash players. some of us don’t have enough money to buy whatever music we want. When I buy an album, I want to make sure I really like the artist and want to support it. I would come to hypemachine and check them out before I bought anything. Please bring it back.
November 1, 2007 11:58 pm
I’ll just agree with what’s been said 1,000 times already. I liked the flashplayer because then I could have it open while browsing other things on hypemachine. I miss it, I miss it, I miss it!
November 3, 2007 10:01 am
[…] they released the update. The initial version scrapped their Flash popup player and judging by the feedback, people were not too pleased. They’ve subsequently updated the site to include a popup player […]
November 7, 2007 11:11 pm
I can’t hide the player like i used to do..
the super human text looks nice yes, but
I miss being able to see all the songs in
a nice neat area and hide in in the corner
of my screen
November 9, 2007 2:15 pm