Machine Shop: Hype Machine Team Blog

We are testing out a cool new take on the old fashioned chatroom. Thanks to Firef.ly‘s software, the chatroom on HypeM Radio now interacts with the entire page. Just click the “Pop Open Hype Radio Chatroom” link and then move your mouse to where you want to make a comment and begin typing. You will also be able to see everybody else’s cursors moving around the page. You can also customize your avatar so if you come back often, people will know who you are!

The other benefit is if you aren’t interested in chatting, now you don’t have to be bothered with the chatroom. This is a unique take on the typical old chat, so there may be a learning curve. Play around with it for a bit and let us know what you think in the comments!

How would you describe The Hype Machine to a friend?

Just some of the more interesting/entertaining responses:

• “one of the coolest sites on the web; a great place to find new music; well designed; easy to use”
• “Most addictive website. Ever. A great place to hunt down new music and make amazing accidental discoveries.”
• “the best web tool to discovering and finding music”
• “THE way to find the music you want and discover the music you didn’t know you wanted.”
• “A great place to hear stuff that’ll be big in six months”
• “Nearly too good to be true, a fool proof weapon when it comes to seeking new music that you’d otherwise not have a chance in hell of hearing.”
• “It’s not trying to hard to be some amazing revolutionary social music experiment, it just is.”
• “a stethoscope on the chest of aural awesomeness.”
• “The Indie Music CNN”
• “God’s gift to the internet”
• “Everything that’s still good about modern music, minus everything MTV turned into.”
• “The Hype Machine is really what makes the tides work. Screw the moon.”
• “Will change the way you discover music…I have said this on many an occasion!”
• “dude, hype machine solvd my problems, physically and emotionally.”
• “like eavesdropping on a million ‘have you heard this?’ conversations between friends”

Our survey is now closed and 1950 of you completed our survey! Thanks to everyone for their participation, it helps us to better understand our audience and how to better cater to you.

First up are the basic demographics like Age, Sex, Education and Income. You can check out the full charts on our Demographics page but I’ll just summarize here. The majority of you are 18-24 years old, male, attending college, make under $20K (most College kids are lucky enough not to have full time jobs!).

How do you discover new music?

The overwhelming majority of you use Online Discovery tools (like Hype Machine or surfing artist pages on MySpace), Music Blogs, and friend + family recommendations to find new music. Half of you use Online Recommendation tools like Last.FM or Pandora as well as print (magazines, newspapers) to find new music.

Some other interesting write-ins for ways you discover music:
# Concerts/Festivals (opening acts etc), DJ Sets, Clubs
# Artists on same record label
# iTunes Networking (when you can see shared music)
# “I ask random people on the street with headphones what they are listening to”
# “3000 of my father’s records (deceased record store owner)”
# Webcasts/Podcasts

Where do you spend your music budget?

The majority of you still spend most of your money to attend concerts. As a believe in the power of live music, this makes me smile. More than half of you still visit record shops and just about half purchase digital music.

Other popular write-ins:
# Music related DVDs/Books
# eBay/Used CDs

How much do you spend on music & music related activites per month?

95% of you regularly spend money on music with 61% of you spending $20 or more on music every month. Compare this to the $3.33 per month spent by the average consumer (source) and you can see that our audience not only is passionate about music, but supports the industry with their dollars.

How many concerts do you attend per month on average?

80% of you attend at least one concert per month, with 20% of you attending about 1 per week. This really highlights the fact that we should make it easier for you to find out about concerts. We recently added SongKick to our previous list of Eventful and Upcoming to provide concert data that you see in the sidebar of an artist page.

The long-awaited Pitchfork.TV launched today and I’m totally excited! Not only is it a beautiful site and already has some great content, but it looks like they will have special screenings of music related films every week!

This week’s featured film is the Pixies documentary loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies. The Pixies’ 2004 reunion tour documentary follows their first rehearsals to the final show, and the drug addictions and inter-band tension in between.

I haven’t seen it yet, but Team Hype are all pretty BIG Pixies fans, and I’ve been wanting to get ahold of this for sometime. Remember, it’s available for streaming this week only, but you can check out the official site for info on ordering it afterwards.

Watch Full Film: loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies

We’re really excited to launch some new features we’ve been working on. If you check out your Dashboard page you will see our new+improved layout.

Here’s a full run-down:

• Loved Tracks: We now show your loved tracks by default when you come to your Dashboard page

Watchlist:

• Everything: This is what the old “Love Feed” was, a mixture of tracks from your favorite Blogs, Friends and Searches
• via Blogs: Only tracks from your favorite blogs
• via Friends: Only tracks from your favorite people
• via Searches: Only tracks from your favorite searches (which can be an artist name, a song name, anything really)

Listening History:

• Your History: Just like Last.FM, we now keep track of what you play on the Hype Machine
• Your Obsessions: Similar to Your History but shows you the tracks you just can’t get enough of. Good for people like Anthony, who play a track so much they wear the MP3 out.
• Friends’ History: Check out what your friends are listening to right now. Live social recommendations sans effort!
• Friends’ Obsessions My favorite new feature, this shows you what all your friends have been playing over and over and over. If a “loved” track from a friend is a good recommendation, this filters that list to the very best.

We’ve also updated the Spy page to include filters by country and popular states/provinces. So you can spy on what people in Quebec, Canada or even Japan are listening to right now!

More paths of discovery to come! Let us know what you think.