Machine Shop: Hype Machine Team Blog

Inspired by Songza & Aza Raskin, we’ve made more improvements in how the in-page Flash player works.

It now appears at the bottom of each page along with information about the currently playing song and stays there as your scroll, making exploring music blogs that much better.

Enjoy and let us know what you think!

Thanks to everyone for the feedback you’ve given us over the past few weeks.

We’ve taken a close look at what was and wasn’t working and are excited to share this new update with you!

All Hype Machine pages are now using a new flash player (based on the JW MP3 Player, for those who want to know). It’s also active inside the popup windows on the site.

Here are a few of the things that have been fixed in this update:

– Volume and seeking controls in the player
– Issue where the player would mistakenly go to the next track when it would encounter buffering
– Issue where the player would not advance to the next track if in an inactive tab in Firefox/Windows. Note that this is still an issue in Safari

Just like with everything, would love to hear what you think, so feel free to write.

Del.icio.us user “taggedhype” (Careful, it’s a big list so may slow down your browser) has managed to take many items in our RSS feed and tag them by genre, name, location (ever visit “british_invasion” ?) or… you name it.

We are not big fans of genres but we do love other ways of sorting content. This is incredible.

We have a feeling this is someone we already know but we’d like to chat about this anyway.

Do you know taggedhype?

Email us if taggedhype is yours or you know who it is!

The Good

The new Hype Machine is brilliant, especially the way the whole page plays like a playlist.
http://hublog.hubmed.org

Anthony’s focusing on the right things and that’s why the new Hype Machine rocks.
I wrote a post recently saying that I don’t like favoriting music. But this is different. This is really bookmarking. It does something really useful.
http://avc.blogs.com/

Congrats to Anthony and his crew for making the best site on these internets even better.
http://www.fangbear.com/

povertyjetset: Hype Machine re-deux is freaking AMAZING!
Twitter update

This is totally sweet. The new Hype Machine kicks ultimate ass and takes many names. Hype Machine shows the open Internet is smarter than any one person, and those that use it as open are those that benefit entirely. Walled gardens SUCK. Please don’t parlay into them.
http://blackrimglasses.com/

The new Hypemachine interface is so approachable, that even the tail end of Generation Y will ‘get it.’
…
Hype Machine is way more historically significant than “In Rainbows.”
http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/

The Bad:

Get your barf bag ready, this one is a clunky monkey to be sure and the new logo is atrocious, kind of like staring at a steaming turd that’s arrived on your plate at a swanky restaurant only to find a giant slice of undigested corn and a toenail sticking out of the gnarled gooey end. Who designs shit like this? Terrible.
http://www.jockohomo.com/datapanik/

New larger type is horrible. Actually, it’s all sort of horrible. Looks like a site aimed at idiot children.
Hype Machine Blog Comment

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.
Hype Machine Blog Comment

Then, there are lots of constructive ones, and while those are less fun, they’ve been hugely useful while tuning the new site. Thank you all for the interest!

UPDATE: Carles offers an excellent “best of” list in comments below.

Thanks again everyone for all your feedback. Angry, happy or both, we love it.

We’ve just updated the site with a new popup player on every page of the site that plays the whole page through.

Here are the links that open it up:

Also in this update, you can now see how many people are watching any blog we track, like this: http://hypem.com/list/1/

Would love to hear what you think!