Elizabeth July 10th, 2007

I came across The Hype Machine today, via Josh Spear, and decided more people should know about it. The Hype Machine tracks what’s happening on music blogs and creates regularly updated links to music that’s being shared. It’s a great way to discover new music, and if you’re a non-US resident who is missing Pandora as much as me it might help to dull that pain a little.

Apart from being a straight index of music, it also provides streaming radio to give you a good taste of what’s being discussed and shared online. They also provide links to amazon, emusic and itunes so that you can easily purchase the music, and a great search engine to help you find what you’re looking for. In particular, it appears to be useful for tracking down obscure B-sides and live bootlegs that can be difficult to find.

As a blogger who pays for her own hosting, I was initially a bit concerned about the impact that The Hype Machine could have on me if I was to be indexed. A quick glance at their About page told me that they cache any tracks that become popular to ease the load on our servers. I’m not entirely sure that this site won’t land you in serious legal trouble if you habitually share entire albums, but as long as you’re doing the right thing it appears to be harmless.

Have fun finding new music!

• Cool stuff , External Sites , Music
• Comments(0)