weekly site review | the hype machine

we're back with another redclay weekly site review. keeping in line with our earlier assessments, this week i'd like to tell you about another site that really manages to stand out from the pack. before coming across this site, i really wanted to dish out the harsh criticism this week. i thought it would be fun to do our first really in depth breakdown of a poorly-executed site. but, alas, i can't - because this week i'm believing the hype.

the hype machine is like the technorati of music blogs, and it's a powerful site that will get you hooked on bands that you've maybe never heard of before. it looks for new activity across many of the best music blogs on the web and then spits out its findings in a neat interface. you can preview songs or you can buy cds and individual mp3 tracks by clicking on the amazon or itunes links that appear next to most tracks. you can use the home page to sort the aggregated blog feeds by latest songs, overall popularity and what other users are listening to at any given point in time (they call it "spying"). you can easily click through to the original blog post(s) where the song was featured. you can even listen to an eclectic internet radio mix of songs recently featured on their site.

my favorite thing about the hype machine is simply how intuitive it is to use. you can favorite songs or blogs much like adding a video to your watchlist on youtube. it's easy to connect with or follow the activity of other hype machine users. their chat interface is really fun to use and is perfect for quickly commenting on the song of the minute. the hype machine also seamlessly connects to the experiences offered by last.fm and twitter - and after following the activity of a few hype users, it became clear to me just how quickly the buzz of a cool song can spread across all of these networks.

i've got a few small issues with the hype machine, though. i wish the slick-looking music player on the main page didn't disappear whenever i click to a new section of the site (you can launch a pop-up player, but that's no fun). i experienced some major slowdown in load times on a few occasions, too. i also got intermittently redirected to a "˜server error' page, but the text of error message was so funny (although i can't reproduce it here) that i can forgive them somewhat.

the way i see it, everybody wins with the hype machine. early music adopters get their fix of drm-free music from all over the genre spectrum and artists get the best kind of promotion possible "“ word of mouth from trustworthy audiophiles. i don't know about you, but i don't pay any attention to the "reviews" written by record company employees on itunes or amazon. i'm more interested in what actual devoted fans are saying. and that's exactly what you get with the hype machine. i highly recommend that you check out this site and join in the fun. i know i'm addicted.