Machine Shop: Hype Machine Team Blog

We want to make it easier for everyone to explore the wealth of blogs we track here on The Hype Machine. You can use last.fm’s music tags to browse by genres, but our set of meta-tags is here to distinguish blogs through some other meaningful criteria:

Featured: about once a week we spotlight one of the hundreds of blog in our directory .This view shows you the recently featured blogs, they are great!

Something different: music that’s not on the Popular page. If you want to discover music you probably haven’t heard before, try one of these blogs.

Female blogger: there just aren’t enough of them.

Original blogger: bloggers who’ve been with us since 2005. That’s a lifetime in internet years, respect your elders!

Hey, did you eat way too much this Thanksgiving weekend? Come jump it all off at Punk Rope on Monday, December 6th!

Punk Rope is an hour of punk rock recess, with relay races, fitness drills, and plenty of jumping, one Dropkick Murphys song at a time. It’s a ton of fun, and we’ll be there on Monday to work on our box jumps and support our friend Tim Haft’s school fitness initiative, Hopping for Health.

Hopping for Health is a rope-jumping program built with the idea that a play-oriented approach to fitness will get kids to move more. (Nearly 20% of Americans ages 6-19 are obese.) Punk Rope is raising funds to provide free Hopping for Health workshops to schools in need of a PE class that kids want to go to. You can help by buying a Beat Inactivity Senseless raffle ticket for some awesome prizes. We’ll also be raffling off our last limited-edition MIXA in class:

So on December 6, 7PM, tear yourself away from your monitor, and come to the 14th Street Y (344 E. 14th Street, b/w 1st and 2nd Avenues, NYC). Don’t live here? Check out a Punk Rope class near you, or try your luck at a mailable raffle prize (that Bouncing Souls tee is mighty nice!)

We’ve been so busy setting up our upcoming site relaunch (teaser: intelligent track collapsing + awwwesome blog directory), we nearly forgot to show off how fun our CMJ events turned out!

Our first party was on Thursday night at Backstage Bar with an incredible, 9 hour lineup of bands and a line all the way down the street. DubFrequency has a great photo recap of our showcase with them on their blog.

We also closed CMJ week out at the PureVolume House with a great after-hours party. Unlimited free drinks might have fueled the insanity that went down below:

Watch live performance by Gobble Gobble
Watch live performance by Home Video

The whole team was out in full force, though Zoya managed to escape all photo documentation (we’ll tie her down next time). Here’s the crew that makes The Hype Machine what it is:

Gobble Gobble with our developer Arkadiy Kukarkin.

Our bizdev & legal guru Scott Kidder dressed as a luchador.

One of our favorite people, Matt Ogle, and Hype Machine’s founding father himself, Anthony Volodkin.

Raise your right hand if you made our upcoming iPhone app. Yup, that’s Sebastian Bean!

And that’s me, Taylor McKnight, and our favorite hustler Keaton Kustler.

The King & Purveyor of the PureVolume House himself, Josh Rowe.

Our next show will be in March at my favorite music festival ever, SXSW. If your band is interested in getting booked, please email Dev Sherlock (first name @ hypem.com ).

Head over to the Hype Tumblr and join our contest to see who can find the most “girl in headphones” graphics on music sites around the web. Three winners will get a pair of sweet SIEGE STEALTH earbuds, so start your lists!

Update: Winners announced on our Tumblr

Max Silvestri, hosting, bonding with the Hype Machine pillow.

Cuddle Magic take the stage with 9 members, myriad instruments, and a giant penguin.

Who brought all the copies of “Fat Music for Fat People” to the swap?

Shark? get ready to rock the books off the shelves.

The Morning Benders close out the night with an acoustic set of songs from their new album.

This is a bookstore…

This was a wonderful, happy evening of friends and music, and thanks to everyone who came by and drank a beer, we raised nearly $3000 for Housing Works! Want to organize something cool in your city? Tell us what you’re thinking, and let’s help everyone fall in love with something new.

Photography: Kyle Dean Reinford