Hypemachine Saves Your Ears With Free Tunes From Music Blogs
Hypemachine, an aggregator of the latest free songs posted on music blogs, has been around for years but I started using it with gusto this week and it's tight. It scans all those blogs and then streams them for you in a popup radio player, which you can narrow by popular, new, or from the top 25 music blogs. If you like a track you can click through to the source blog and download the mp3. (Most of the time the mp3s have been released onto the internet by the artists themselves. If there's ever a question, most have an option to buy the song on Amazon or iTunes). A great way to freshen up your music mix without having to think too hard or shell out. [Hypemachine]
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Shhhhh! This is supposed to be a secret!
Is this a paid advertisement?
See also seeqpod.com.
I used to use hypemachine a lot, but in the last 7-8 months the usability of it just dropped off. A lot of the songs that were playable just dropped off (even though the mp3's are still available on the original blogs) and for some mysterious reason that eliminated the pop-up player option that was clickable on every song. Still good, just needs to get back to where it once was!
Although this is a great service, MP3s on the Hype Machine are not always legal to download. Even if you can download them this is a legal "grey area". If you feel particularly guilty about it, download from iTunes instead.
Access it via songbird and it's even better.
HypeMachine is my favorite music aggregator by far. I lost my faith in the freshness of music until I really explored the site and started using it. Now I'm buying albums from new artists much more often. You never know what you might find.
My saved playlist: http://hypem.com/the_wallbanger
HypeMachine is my favorite music aggregator by far. I lost my faith in the freshness of music until I really explored the site and started using it. Now I'm buying albums from new artists much more often. You never know what you might find.
My saved playlist: [hypem.com]
Yes! This is how music downloading should be. And if it's showing up on a blog, chances are the artist just wants to be heard. Metallica and Britney aren't big staples of the file-sharing blog world.
It's been around for quite awhile and is a good way to find the hip and the new. Keep in mind the tunes you may download at the individual sites are not legal - if you side with the RIAA or Lars Ulrich...
Yup, it's awesome. There's also a Greasemonkey plugin out there that will allow you to download the Hype Machine's archived copy of a song if it still exists on their server.
Wow, I never knew such a thing existed! Thanks for sharing. I will be using this ALOT to find mp3s by new artists...
That site is completely parasitic. There is actual editorial content on music blogs, and a relationship of trust that forms between the writers and their readership. Hypemachine reduces all that to near random click-and-listen surfing, and skims referral revenue off the top away from the blogs they steal all the posts/recommendations from.
People, an RSS reader following your favorite music blogs accomplishes the same thing, without the content theft that Hypemachine engages in. Most aggregators will even handle the audio just fine.
As a more usable, ethical alternative, try Peel.
err.. elbo.ws
@tinyrobot, seriously? hype machine is parasitic but peel is totally cool?
you are in SOME universe...
@tinyrobot: I dunno. I feel this is just one logical step beyond the post being featured on a site that aggregates headlines of articles, like Digg. If they didn't link to the MP3s, a Greasemonkey script or extension would be made. Offering downloads would be enough to make me upset. Ad revenue is the key issue, as that's what keeps these sites up.
On a side note, not every blog has worked out ways to monetize their RSS feeds, so that might be cheating them of ad revenue unless they worked out a way to advertise over RSS.
However, they should use something like Grooveshark to share the MP3s and save the blogs some bandwidth money.
Use to be better, though - you could subscribe as a podcast and download for ever into iTunes
@lemonchar:you're kidding, right? everything is on the blogs. everything. that's why it took MONTHS for madonna to go platinum and minutes for janet jackson to end her career. they're both pretty darned pop, if you ask me, and very well blogged.
What an awesome thing.