The New Hype Machine
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Well, looks like somethings about to go down... http://hypem.com/
Any ideas what it is, or any ideas about the image on the front page? -
though this link doesn't work any more than any others do - it's their music blog directory that they've been building for a long while. the previous listing was here http://hypem.com/list/ but it hadn't been updated in forever. good look on the tip though, curious to see what unfolds.
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So possibly they're revamping with more of a focus on finding music blogs to read than tracks?
If so then that can only be a good thing, right? -
i'm with you - should be cool
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I don't think the new hypem likes my blog :(
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In what way? Turning up in search fine etc etc for me...
(Oh, to be worrying about whether hypem likes my blog) -
Some major changes I can see here, from first glance:
--The latest page now shows "My subscriptions" by default
--Tracks now include quick access to all the blogs that have posted them
--All historical hearts are combined and displayed next to a track. This could get annoying for bloggers who like to see how many hearts their recent track just got so as to gauge whether it'll hit the Popular list
--Blog listing includes defined tags for some "unique" blogs, such as female bloggers. Kinda bummed about this one (selfishly, because we're not in any) -- for example, I have about 15 female writers on my site, but because I have the same amount of male writers...meh. It's not a huge deal, but I have a feeling there's going to be a high volume of visits for these few girls listed here
--Front page shows more than the former max of 3 tracks per blog = bug?
--Filtering ability in the popular list for 3 days / 1 week / no remixes has become really easy
I'm sure there's more to add, but that's what I've got up my sleeve for now. -
http://blog.hypem.com/
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Did the subscription feature already exist? Well, even if it was, it's certainly more prominent now, it'll be interesting to see if it catches on and blogs have rss subscribers, email subscribers, facebook subscribers, twitter subscribers, *and* Hype Machine subscribers.
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Site just doesn't load for me.
Not the Tumblr. That's fine. -
@Caleb - Not in any of the tags I'd like to be in (well, at least on the front), I wonder how ya get to the front. Plus, my site's avatar is kinda shitty, at least compared to the rest. I gotta see if I can change that. My biggest complaint would have to be combing the hearts, which Jason pointed out.
Like it overall, though. Loving the progress. + Still simple and clean, Props!!
Oh, and wouldn't Hypem really benefit from enlisting the help of all its bloggers?.. if it isn't already? -
Creating a category for female bloggers is probably going to be problematic. I imagine Hype will be getting some interesting feedback on that one.
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First up, Anthony, props on the upgrade. Been working on my own for 3+ months now, and can appreciate the work that goes into it, particularly on the back-end. My initial reaction to the Hypem redesign was "this is it?", but it wasn't long until I appreciated the subtle changes and all the work that went into it on the back-end.
To the girl things...what about those blogs that are balanced as far as gender? We've got a ton of girls writing on Indie Shuffle, though I understand how that may not be easy to reflect in an aggregator... -
@anthony - I really like the update, but I do have one thought - Is there any way you could list the tags you've tagged blogs with on each blog's Hypem page? I think it would be quite useful for both users exploring other similar blogs and bloggers wanting to know how HypeM sees their blogs.
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According to Hype I'm not a female blogger. I didn't make their list anyway!
It is interesting that they've singled us out like that... -
Tim, the tags change according to the most recent songs you've posted. So I'm not sure how helpful it would be for those tags to change every time, especially if last.fm is inaccurate with them, etc. If it's not too hard to do that it would definitely be interesting, but I think if they start "tagging" each song or blog and letting people know what it's listed under, people may hesitate to click simply based on a tag that may not describe the sound well. Just thinking out loud here.
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I love the new changes,
Annoyingly/satisfyingly My cousin and I saw a gap for an aggregator that took into account the idea of a song appearing numerous times from different blogs and stopped duplicates appearing (we had other ideas but this was the initial spark).
Looks like that has now been covered although only partially... Im looking at the page for a band called Civil Civic and we are listed along with several other blogs as posting a song but then it appears again further down the list, same song but blogged by a handfull of other blogs. I'm not sure if im making much sense, anyone else get what im saying?
Why dont we all get bunched together as blogging the song? Im guessing it's something to do with tags or some similar hijinks.
But yeah love the new system, although I can't find APFOS in any of the categories... probably because we are pretty damn tiny -
@anthony
Think you misunderstood me. I didn't say I had a problem with it, I said it was probably going to be problematic. Mostly the 'different perspective' bit, which could be interpreted as saying 'male perspective is the norm'. Indeed, according to my Tumblr dashboard, that's how more than a fair share have taken it (and hey, several of the comments on the Hype blog indicate that as well). But y'all changed it to 'there just aren't enough of them', so I'd say that will deflect that particular criticism, for the most part.
But I totally understand Zoya's explanation and get what you were going for. -
apfs - we are polishing this track grouping. It turned out to be really hard - it's not just about the titles of the songs, of course. Will be improving.
Sean R - yeah, we are happy to accept the criticism and do it anyway ;) -
Yeah, when I read Sean's original comment I knew he wasn't referring to himself but rather for other folks it could be problematic. Which I agree with after reading some of the comments.
I think it's pretty lame though for male bloggers to complain about this. I love the ladies, can't live with them but can't live without them. ;-) The fact is males and females think and process things differently, thank God (Mars and Venus). I love most of the female blogs that I've read. They write from the heart, with compassion and warmth. They truly do offer a "different perspective" and there is definitely not enough of them. So, great idea to spotlight them!
@Anthony - The changes to the site are excellent. Shit, I may even start to visit the site now. ;-)
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The changes are really interesting. particularly, the "My Subscriptions" as the default. Great idea Anthony. It will certainly encourage people to follow blogs more on HypeM and not just look at "latest" sometimes missing great pieces by blogs they typically like.
The "female blogger" perspective is also very interesting. I have no problem with it, and think it's a great idea. I wonder though if it opens the door for other suggestions like race, different languages, etc.
The only thing that perplexes me some is the accumulative hearts, as Jason was suggesting. How do you know if people are enjoying that song NOW as opposed when it first got introduced. It's unclear to me whether that will encourage bloggers to dig up really liked songs more, or have the opposite effect thereby further accelerating the need to find NEW music. Though how you guys tweek the multiple posts of the same song will also directly affect the outcome of this heart situation.
Either way, congrats man and to your whole team as I'm sure it was a group effort. -
@Anthony
I imagine you are aware of some these issues, but I just thought I let you know I saw that Altered Zones had several posts on the latest, as shown below, whereas another blog was one single post with several mp3s in the post.
Also, I tried seeing if SFCritic's post had been included in the latest, but couldn't find it. Has the method for which posts are included changed for the latest scrolling? Before it was the first post of each blog each day was on the front page for a certain period of time, right? -
I like the female blogger category, but that's probably because I'm in it. The new site loads much faster and doesn't look as cluttered. So far, so good.
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First, I've got to say I like the new Hypem. I wish I was included ;) But seriously, it's cleaner and easier to use from the user perspective imo. I never really paid that much attention to my subscriptions before and I guess I will now since they're more prominent but I don't know yet. I'm sure you're working on fixing bugs and aware of it but I should note that the Twitter chart page has been off and on for me since the update.
Second, I really like the language tag idea that SFCritic mentioned. I think that would be a good addition. -
"Also, I tried seeing if SFCritic's post had been included in the latest, but couldn't find it. Has the method for which posts are included changed for the latest scrolling? Before it was the first post of each blog each day was on the front page for a certain period of time, right? " - SFCritic
Wondering the exact same thing! -
In a very male dominated world of music bloggerin' & journalismerin', highlighting women above the white noise of an infinite number of blogs is wonderful. On good ol' tsururadio, I love Ari & Dorice's perspective on music & life in general. Another fave of mine is Abbie over at Knoxroad.... Wonderful women!
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Tsuru -- both of the examples you just gave wouldn't show up in the female-bloggers section. It seems that any site with multiple authors of both genders is likely to be excluded -- understandably, it's much easier to differentiate a blog that only has one female writer, versus another blog that has 10 females and 10 males (inyourspeakers.com on the large scale, or KnoxRoad and Tsuru for smaller staff examples).
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@Anthony Totally stumped as to how tracks earn their way into the Popular list now that all hearts are shown as combined...when you get a chance, would great appreciate an explanation :-)
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We are revising how the Popular page works right now, stay tuned
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@anthony when you get a chance can you explain a little what's happening with the "lastest posts" section? are only a select group of bloggers included in that?
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@Jason - I luv u Bro and I wouldn't be worried about the female blogger section.
You even wrote, on another thread, that HM was a good tool to use at the start of building your blog. And you are now well established, getting 500k pageviews a month from mainly Google SEO, Facebook etc. Seriously doubt the HM female blogger category will hurt your traffic.
Besides Bro, we gotta show love to those beautiful lady bloggers who are not part of a mass contributor blog!
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The idea of the female blogger category should be utterly unnecessary, and even borderline offensive. Is there a category for black bloggers? How about disabled ones? And what if a female blogger has the same tedious middle class indie taste as all their male counterparts? And if a black blogger doesn't like "urban" music, should they be reclassified as white and taken off the special list?
Sorry to be a bit offensive, but that is basically the core of this particular line of thinking.
As Tsuru says, however, the world of blogging, and music writing in general, is in desperate need of diversity and I suppose that until we can actually achieve that in reality, we have to do everything we can to encourage it. So even though it shouldn't be necessary, and not something I am that comfortable with as an idea, I do welcome it at this stage. As a white, middle class, male, indie music blogger, I would agree that we really could do with fewer white, middle class, male, indie music bloggers and few more of... well, pretty much everyone else. -
choleric
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@SongbyToad - well said.
@Jason - I know Knox & I wouldn't be listed, nor do I think they should, we are both male-run blogs with some female writers. But, they are the 1st 3 women I thunked of when I think of female bloggers, is all. I do think Ari, Dorice, and Abbie should dump our penised asses and start a full-scale blog of their ownses... I'd read the fuck out of them blogs!!! -
And no... I'm not being a dirty bastard with that last statement.
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@Tsuru - "Well said"? Is that because he said you commented that the music blogging world is in "desperate need of diversity", when in fact you didn't? Your comment was speaking about women bloggers in a male dominated world. I read no mention of overall diversity that Toad was ranting about.
I think diversity is a good thing, have no problem with that. But I really don't think that having a female blogger category on HM is going to lead to the consequences that Toad suggests. That sounds like Squashed based paranoia to me.
Fuck, the inner circle is ever so tight. A lot of white, urban, middle class, male indie music blogger mutual butt kissing and dick stroking going on.
meni vituiksi
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Hmm... I'm more curious about how the categories are done...
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"the consequences that Toad suggests."
I am not suggesting that there will be any consequences, I am just saying that this kind of thing perpetuates the concept of judging people by what they are rather than who they are, and thus makes me a little uncomfortable. Ideally female bloggers shouldn't be judged on the fact that they're female at all, positively or negatively - the whole thing should make no difference whatsoever.
I do, however, absolutely acknowledge that until we get to the stage where there is less of what you fairly accurately characterise as an 'inner circle of white middle class men', then we need to encourage diversity any way we can. -
"--All historical hearts are combined and displayed next to a track. This could get annoying for bloggers who like to see how many hearts their recent track just got so as to gauge whether it'll hit the Popular list"
That's the one thing I've noticed (other than the site looking much cleaner and more elegant - good work).
One the plus side, it stops you seeing all those hundreds of entries for one track. One the negative, you don't see how many times people have hearted your entry - just the sum of all hearts. Will give it a bit of time to see how this pans out. -
@SongbyToad
How about a miserable sweary Scots blog category? -
"How about a miserable sweary Scots blog category?"
It would be a huge category. Not many blogs in it, but huge nonetheless!
"This could get annoying for bloggers who like to see how many hearts their recent track just got so as to gauge whether it'll hit the Popular list"
I say bollocks to these bloggers. -
"How about a miserable sweary Scots blog category?"
It would be a huge category. Not many blogs in it, but huge nonetheless!
"This could get annoying for bloggers who like to see how many hearts their recent track just got so as to gauge whether it'll hit the Popular list"
I say bollocks to these bloggers.
Statement 1 buoyed by statement 2 :-D -
Hey, when is Elbo going to start sprucing up their site? C'mon Brandon, it's time to get it together, female blogger category dude!
Oh wait, it may be a matter of finances. Volodkin's got the Russian mafia funding his site. Don't mess with those dudes, they make the Italian mafia look like pre-schoolers. ;-))))
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@Merz.. Sorry if my comments confused you. I think music should have more women in it, more bands, more bloggers, more journalists, more magazines, more labels, etc, etc, etc. I agree that in a perfect world, considering they are half the population, it shouldn't be necessary to make a button for them, but I also recognize this isn't nearly a perfect world so a little button over at hypem is a good thing. I also agree that there are too many white indie boys running the bloggerin' show.
I also think it's hypem's site and they can do whatever the fuck they want with it, whiny bloggers be damned. Not sure what else you want me to say.
Women bloggers good.
Highlighting women bloggers gooder.
A few less aging white male bloggers good.
Hypem making updates (always risky on a popular site) good. -
@Tsuru - Dude, there is absolutely nothing to apologize for.
"Not sure what else you want me to say". Damn, wasn't really asking for you to say anything. My comment was really towards Toad's initial rant, and then his second paragraph where I just felt he misquoted you since you just mentioned women bloggers. You guys obviously know each other better than I know each of you. So, he correctly interpreted your comment having addressed a bigger scope (diversity) rather than just women bloggers.
Remember, I'm the old dude on the outside not part of the clique. So, most of the time I don't understand the background and connection you other guys share.
Also I do agree with you, Toad and other's about the diversity thing. Shit, I wish HM had a category for a fucked up, disabled, lower class, 50 yr old, pathetic, loser, ex-music blogger. I would seriously own that category.
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No worries man, I don't think anyone took offence. I knew my original comment was a little bit open to misinterpretation anyway, and if I hadn't had a few at the time I wrote it I probably wouldn't have bothered at all - it's hardly like it was a massively profound thought which desperately needed to see the light of day!
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There's seems to be a lot of bugs in the new theme. Not to criticize The Hype Machine (much <3), but shouldn't they have fixed the bugs before releasing it to the public?
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Since there's an "ad-free" category, how about a "authorized mp3s" category for those of us who only post mp3s with permission? :) And I also miss the big alphabetized list of all blogs.
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Tee hee.
Actually, I laugh, but Vic makes a very good point. -
Yeah, I know there would only be a few of us. But it takes a lot more time and effort for me to only post authorized mp3s than it does for me to be a girl. ;p
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