Machine Shop: Hype Machine Team Blog

We are gradually releasing parts of a new update that we started over the weekend.

An important change on the front page is the selection of blogs we draw from.  By default, we now show posts from the top 100 music blogs as reported by Technorati, Delicious and our data.  You can click “all blogs” to see the latest posts from all blogs we index.

This is an ongoing experiment and we are likely to tweak this further.  We want to see what changes we’ll see in the usage when we make the front page move slower and have a more recognizable set of blogs in the set.  This is all to make it friendlier and accessible to those typing in “hypem.com” for the first time.

Would love your thoughts on this as well, comment or email us.

UPDATE 2009-03-10: We are close to releasing a new experimental update that uses an idea suggested by Jeff from the Heart on a Stick blog: having the front page list one post per day (24h) per blog for all blogs. The post may contain multiple tracks but only one (typically the first one in the 24h period) will be visible. This will be default view. It addresses our concerns about volume on the front page as well as flattens the playing field for many blogs out there. What do you think?

The full view and the top 100 views will also be available.

UPDATE 2009-03-10 6:30PM ET: The new view is live: http://blog.hypem.com/2009/03/3-ways-to-view-the-front-page/

“I love music blogs because they’re music fans. They’re authentic and passionate about music. They’re no different than me. All they’re doing is spreading the word about stuff they like. The authentic will rise to the top, which is why I like aggregators like The Hype Machine. I think it’s brilliant. It’s a great way of seeing what music fans are talking about versus some other filter. I’d rather the filter be a social filter, and then you can go into niches. Maybe it’s a bluegrass filter or a country filter or a hard rock filter or an ambient filter. Whatever. Those people are really passionate about that music. You know what? That’s what it’s about. Songs are not copyright. Songs are emotions.”

— Terry McBride on music blogs in the interview with Rollo & Grady.  More about Terry on Wikipedia, his bio and blog.  Rollo & Grady has more interviews with a winning music/web industry crowd.

A few recent conversations prompted me to collect the things we consider when we decide to include a blog on the Hype Machine, and share them with you.

We take the process seriously, since it’s actually several opportunities at once. For us, it’s a chance to support writers we respect (by featuring them on our pages), and encourage others to write while supporting a model we think works. It’s also a chance to add another voice our users can trust to discover something new.

When looking at a new blog, we ask questions to see if it fits with the ideas behind the Hype Machine. We want to know why the writer or group does it. We want to know how long they’ve been at it, how they prefer to share their thoughts. We want to get an idea of what music they end up being attracted to the most.

We look for genuine voices; people excited about music, thinking, drawing, experimenting, creating. We want people who would blog whether or not they were listed on the Hype Machine. Most importantly, though, we want to know if the blog would add something new to the conversations already tracked here. If that’s not the case, adding it is a disservice to everyone: the authors of the blog (as they’d drown in the noise of consensus of other blogs), the bloggers already on the site and the artists whose music they discuss (the noise makes it harder for them to be heard), and our users (why have more of the same?).

We usually will not add these types of blogs to the site:

* Official label blogs (though we love it when bloggers link to official blog posts with new releases)
* DJ blogs that feature their own mixes (they are all awesome, right?)
* Blogs that are run by promoters of parties, DJs or artists
* Web music startup company blogs
* Party photo blogs

One of the toughest things in this whole process is to get across that there isn’t really a right way to write a music blog, and our selection process doesn’t validate something as “Right”. There are plenty of things people publish that are awesome, yet don’t fit into the music ecosystem where we play. But we do think that our selection process makes for a kickass experience for everyone involved.

Jim Carini recently shared his incredible idea with us and I had to pass it along. First the background:

According to Newsweek, the struggling US economy is bringing about an upcoming Charity Crisis due to people losing jobs and trying to save more. 2008’s charitable donations are expected to be down $8-10 billion! It’s estimated that 100,000 nonprofits nationwide may be forced to close their doors leaving millions of Americans without a safety net during the worst recession since the great depression.

So Jim mashed up the modern day trend of a Flashmob (big group of people showing up, doing something crazy, then dispersing) with Charitable contributions into something he calls Flashmob4Charity.

The idea: Get 1 million people to each give just $10 to create a war chest
from which the flashmob4charity community makes grants each month to
charities facing financial crisis. And to keep things non-controversial
they¹ll only be concentrating on food, shelter, clothing and medical care
charities.

So head over to Flashmob4Charity and sign up to pledge $10. You’ll only get charged if at least 100,000 people sign up so that it has the intended grand-scale effect. They’ve also done a compilation album with indie label Nettwerk Music Group. Everyone who pledges atleast $10 will get a special link where they can download the album free.

One of my goals this year is to volunteer somewhere. Where do you guys volunteer and do charity work?