has anyone else been bothered by this latest change at the hype machine??

when you click on "latest" you only get to see the "top 100 blogs" latest songs, not all blogs. it took me a minute or two to even realize the change--who is going to bother to click on all blogs now??

i am not in the top 100 blogs and i really, really resent this change. hype machine traffic is very important to me. i would implore anthony et al to please make the default "all blogs" and let the "top 100 blogs" be the option. PLEASE put it back to how it was.

yeah, but this doesn't even serve the consumers very well. the top 100 blogs are not going to be nearly as diverse in what they offer.

this is just wrong. plain and simple, wrong.

Here I thought it was broken.  I mean, I only see four blogs on the front page before it asks to paginate.  that makes no sense.

I know - it actually makes me kind of self conscious.

That's why I think it's broken.  the fact that the time isn't updating or anything.

I guess they're truly embracing their name... the hype machine. This kind of blows.

Yeah really uncool....

Until it's officially announced as up and running, I'd assume this is just a badly rolled-out modification and that the default setting would be "All Blogs."  Anthony has always been pro-diversification, and to limit the front page to Top 5 Blogs means everything will be even more heavily skewered to Indie and Dance, and that would be dumb.

doesn't effect our stats at all, since we're not on the hype machine. so there's one up side to that. haha.

The reason you dont see that many updates with the 'top 100 blogs' scheme is that at least 30 of the blogs in the top 100 are pretty much inactive nowadays and some such as 'listening post' in the top 20 are not even officialy active anymore. In theory, the inactivity should help bring these blogs down and get the fresh blood up, but since many of these blogs are in the top 100 due to a long lifespan it makes it really hard for new blogs to replace them.

I'm not sure how this move really affects blog traffic, tho. moteldemoka per example has been in the top 100 for more than a year now and yet I think we get most of our visits from searches by specific songs or artists. We very rarely get any posted track up on the popular section (happens once every two or three months, being optimistic) but I suppose blogs which are not in the top 100 and get all of their traffic by posting the latest YYY's Zero remix by Royksopp feat. Kanye West will inevitably see some downfall in traffic.
Some days when I'm utterly bored I check the sitemeter immediatly after our last post gets published and count the visits coming directly from the main page and I dont think it has ever surpassed the 30-number count. Eitherways I dont think you guys should worry, I'm sure this is just a temporary thing while Antony and Co. end up twitching everything in there.

the top 100 list on hype is soooooooooooooooooooo outdated it isn't even funny. my blog's technorati and delicious users numbers never change. we've had this conversation in here before, about how they rank blogs is not necessarily the most accurate.

moka, i get a fair number of hits every day from the time period that my blog appears on the first few pages of the "latest" listings, especially when it's on the front page. for small blogs like myself, that time period is crucial. yes, the bulk comes from searches for individual bands and songs, but that time on the front is very important.

right now there are three different listings on the "top 100" latest and two of them are from the same blog, which, i would argue, isn't even a blog because it comes from a radio station (wfmu).

can't state it enough--this is hurtful to all blogs other than the top 100, not to mention the folks looking for new music.oh, did i mention it sucks for the bands, too, because their exposure is now limited?

for the record, I agree with y'all and would also prefer it to go back to the way it was AND that the Top 100 be updated

but implying that those blogs in the Top 100 only post traffic-grabbing bullshit and that the little guys are the only true advocates of new and deserving bands is utter bullshit.

For the record.

Frank - I certainly wasn't implying that, but you will be prone to developing something of a monoculture if you are that restrictive in who you index on your front page.

I am glad there is a debate about this here, as we've been having a similar debate ourselves.

The issue is that when the group of blogs on the front page is large, the page scrolls too fast and that traffic-grabbing bullshit gets more attention. The monoculture of remixes and electro actually gets perpetuated in a stronger way too.

Even though the top 100 blogs [as computed according to the technorati/etc] is an approximate measure, most of those blogs have been around for a long time and make the potential diversity greater. They don't have the same incentives as smaller, newer blogs.

This is really counter-intuitive, I know. Try out both of the pages. If you could only have 100 blogs on the front page (vs the total ~1300), how would you pick them? (not a rhetorical question, what do you really think?)

# olneyce/mjrc on consumers vs producers: It's tempting to think of these two as being separate directions, but it's actually much closer together. There are things that screw up the balance in one direction or the other (check out the assorted hype clone sites, for ex) but if consumers are intelligently served, there will be more of them and they will end up with the producers.

So if you are not a top 100 blog, the music you post will no longer show up anywhere on Hype Machine?

J HoaS - what do you mean by "pre-popular"?

Well Anthony, if Hypem is set on this Top 100 thing, is it fair to ask for regular updated Technorati/Delicious stats?

I'm sure doing this for 1300 blogs isn't easy, but that list is more important than ever. It should be kept current.

(don't know if this is relevant, but Anthony, I think it's still using the Top 25 Blogs, rather than 100... interesting discussion)

It does seem that the same blogs are getting the attention on the front page. But oddly enough, every time I look at my stats, my referrals from Hypem.com (front page) keep going up... but I can't see a Pretty Much Amazing post anywhere in the first few pages? I keep on seeing Largehearted Boy, Chromewaves, GvsB, You Aint No Picasso My Old KY Blog, WFMU, brooklyn vegan. you know, the usual.

UPDATE: you can access Google Feedreader's data? What about FeedBurners? that would be cool. I think Technorati links is a SOLID way to rank blogs (that's the whole point of it no?). Delicious' bookmark tracking is great too, but it seems that most people have to be very involved, or massive to get their numbers up.

The issue is that when the group of blogs on the front page is large, the page scrolls too fast and that traffic-grabbing bullshit gets more attention.

That might be true.  But if so, this solution is a case of cutting off the nose, mouth, and forehead to spite the face.  The 1000 other blogs who post legitimate, often fairly unique stuff, will simply never have anyone read it who wasn't already a regular at the blog. 

For example, I was really excited about my Vanessa Peters post because a) I think she's great and b) I'm to-date the only person listed for her on the Hype Machine.  I paid attention to how many Hype/elbo.ws hits I got that day because every one of those people was someone who might be introduced to her this way but probably never would otherwise.  It was around 30.  I have no idea if any of those were persuaded.  But that's just one post by one small blog.  Multiplied out 1000 times you get a lot of people finding about both new artists and new blogs they might want to drop into their Google Reader or come back to regularly.  That isn't good for anyone except the people who are already at the top.

If the problem is that there are blogs regularly engaged in posting "bad" content, then stop listing them.  Don't paint the other 1200 blogs with all one brush.  Like Marcy, I've been writing for over 3 years at this point.  I will never ever be a top 100 blog - I don't post the right kind of stuff, or regularly enough - but the steady stream of new entrants from the Hype frontpage is part of what keeps things going.

And not to toot my own horn, but my blog is precisely the sort of place that is never going to have the heft to pull readers in, but is wide-ranging and is very writing-focused.  So for a particular type of reader, it's going to be far more interesting than a stereogum, MOKB, etc.  Not because it's "better" - but because it fits into a different niche.  The reason why the Hype Machine has been so good for blogs is beacuse it offers a means of casually introducing fans to that sort of thing.  They get a taste from a random clickthrough and possibly fall in love.  That's what's going to be lost.

two more points.

first, when did the hype machine become about editing content--isn't it an aggregator? aren't aggregators by definition neutral? if you want to control content, then you are in the wrong business. you should be a content provider, not an aggregator.

second, if you follow the "discussion" here in this thread, no one--let me repeat, NO ONE--is in favor of the change. perhaps you will factor that into your decision.

i realize i'm repeating myself here, but i am extremely upset about this. you have us all by the balls, as you well know, and we are impotent to do anything about it, because without being on the hype machine, our hit counts suffer, and without being on the hype machine, the bands we talk about suffer, so we're stuck with whatever you do decide to do.

oh, and all the listings are screwed up. they say "posted a moment ago" when they showed up hours ago.

and the player is fucked up too. it only plays one song now and then stops. it used to continue to play on down the entire page. that sucks, too, btw.

Chill out, it's a work in progress... Mr. V has already said they're still working on everything, so before becoming "extremely upset about this" and lashing out, let things progress a little and see where they're heading. Offering advice along the way is, I imagine, encouraged, but just saying something sucks, something's screwed up, no one's in favor of this, you've got us by the balls... that doesn't do anything to help. Anthony's never been out to screw over you, me or anyone else... why suggest that he is now, before you even know what's going on?

sorry to be so combative, but i am upset and i'm not going to make any bones about it. and he does have us by the balls--i mean, if i stomp my foot and say, "i'm quitting, take my blog off," there's no skin off his back, is there? we're the only ones who have anything to lose here, not them.

i'm not saying he's intending to screw us over, but the by-product of this change would effectively do so.

or even the people watching that particular blog on hype. I've always wondered why that never played any role.

+1

And no matter what HypeM decides to do, it's still going to be one of the most important tools for music bloggers out there [do people stop "Digg"-ing when they don't reach the front page?]. At the end of the day, HM is their project and if they feel going about things one way will make it evolve -- and not just be a clusterfuck of blog posts, become a community, a social tool, or whatever their goal is -- you have let them do what they have to do.

culture buddy - it was accidentally reading top 25 vs 100, I fixed it, it will be visible shortly. Thank you.

jeff - "It's a little like paring down your front page to artists already featured on the Billboard Top 40." No. The idea here is that we present a set of blogs and the set of blogs figures out what music they are most into. From that, people have the chance to find something genuine and interesting. Those top blogs do post lots of esoteric stuff, interesting stuff too.

People not as familiar with music blogs, however, don't quite get the nuances we are discussing here. To them, it's all "stay at home people with nothing to do that are for some reason also killing newspapers" and hype machine is a 'website with remixes on it'. So the idea is, take some of the most accessible / etc (it's a blended idea, really, a few factors here) present it in an easy way to people so that they have a chance at all to get this and understand what's going on. Can't do this for everyone, but I think we can do it for more people than get it currently.

olneyce - i am totally with you here. the process you've described is exactly what we want to happen. what's an alternative way you see us picking out 100 blogs to reduce noise on the front page and make it more digestible? yours and mjrc's blogs are good examples of the values and ideas we want to support. The tricky thing we learned, however, is that these values aren't always reflected in the numerical data we are able to find all over.

Although I give you credit for trying to do some curation here, even if I don't know if it'll work.