The Hype Machine Goes 2.0
Not Web 2.0, that is, since I think The Hype Machine has qualified for that moniker since its inception. No, The Hype Machine is entering version 2.0 and its latest incarnation as a music blog aggregator. Unsurprisingly, most of the upgrades follow the standard format of social-networking sites.
Signing up for an account gives every user a dedicated page, currently at beta.hypem.com/UserName, and from there its possible to track your favorite songs, favorite blogs, and favorites users. Although not quite as slickly polished, the general structure of the site is reminiscent of Last.fm (a slickness I don’t necessarily miss) and I assume Hype Machine is positioning itself to be the cross between Last.fm and elbo.ws.
Right now I only have two major complaints. First, there is no way to make your public page private, which means use of the favoriting function is only possible if you’re OK with everyone seeing what you’re favoriting. Since I like to maintain a greater control of my online footprint, I’ve had to register using a handle other than my name, something I prefer not to do.
Second, the programmers have removed the external media player that used to open in the previous iteration of their site. That itself is great and I applaud the inclusion of a new fully integrated player that still runs through through your search results as before, but does so without opening a new window. Unfortunately, the site takes damn near 5 to 6 minutes to accomplish that task. So if you’re not paying attention to click on to each new song, thats about 6 minutes of waiting for every 3 minutes of music. Without knowing anything about how their site works, however, I’m guessing this is something that will be solved sooner rather than later.
These two complaints aside, the new design looks great both visually and structurally. With Last.fm not as useful as I was hoping it would be for discovering new music, I’m now putting my faith in Hype Machine to come through as my go-to site in the next few weeks.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
ikm
Oh great. So not only did they redesign their refreshingly plain interface and incorporate the color lime fuckoff green but now they want me to enter all kinds of personal content on their site? YES!! Another place to spam everyone I know with pointless minutia about my personal tastes. JUST WHAT I NEEDED. Excuse me while I go throw up.
Oct 15th, 2007
Ian
OK, I should point out that you don’t *need* to register in order to use it. In fact, if you don’t register the site is exactly the same as it was before but with a fairly standard, and obviously unattractive in your opinion, 2.0 design. The login is only necessary if you want to take advantage of the SNS stuff.
Oct 15th, 2007
Connor
6 minutes? Your internet/computer must be awful, because it takes about 2 seconds to load songs for me. And there’s a popup button you can click to launch a window.
You should seriously consider picking up some common sense and getting out of the blogger business.
Oct 15th, 2007
ikm
OK, that makes it a little better. I wouldn’t really know because I couldn’t actually get through to the site yesterday because less than ten thousand people were on it or some nonsense.
Ian how dare you have a blog if you can’t appreciate the greatness that is Hype Machine! God! lol
Oct 16th, 2007
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