by Jonathan Young

Created on: July 11, 2008   Last Updated: July 12, 2008

Website: http://hypem.com/

The Hype Machine monitors hundreds of blogs for new music, collecting the MP3 links in a massive library of songs that you can favorite, adding to your dashboard, and then play like a radio. The songs cannot be downloaded from the Hype Machine because, you know, the site doesn't want to be shut down for copyright violations, but each posting includes a download link to Amazon and iTunes.

This is a great way to find new music and blogs. All genres are included, and whenever the blogosphere starts hyping up a new song, it's right there in the Popular section. There is also a Latest page, a Chat page, and a Spy page that lets you access recent searches and the dashboards of other users.

The randomness of this website is what makes it a good way to discover music. Unlike Pandora, the Hype Machine doesn't care what you like. It just gives you a list of popular songs from all over the world, and lets you sift through it. This would be annoying, except that a large percentage of the music on the site is strangely awesome. So if you're an eclectic listener, you can just open the front page and click "play." And if you encounter a blogger who consistently posts good songs, you can also favorite their blog, so that their news posts will show on your dashboard.

After a while, some old songs in your dashboard won't be playable anymore, but by the time their "play" buttons disappear you'll have discovered several hundred new songs that you like. There's no way to keep up with constantly updated list of songs on the front pages, much of which list contains music that will rock your face off, so your radio station never runs out of new music.

Similar sites like Pandora, Last.fm, MySpace Music, and Tagworld will find you new music, but may also provoke some Internet rage related to slight bandwidth-related delays and clever ad placement. Pandora and the Hype Machine are by far the best-designed of such sites. And while Pandora's selection of music is extensive and growing, its format is too much like a real radio station. The Hype Machine feels more like the future of music, because you can listen for days without ever hearing the same song twice. You might notice that certain genres are especially popular at the moment, indie and dance in particular, but if you already like indie and dance, and obscure dance remixes of obscure indie songs, then it's no problema.

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