The Hype Machine is an application we've seen before without the smart interface. It's an "experiment" that aggregates just the song file links from MP3 blogs ... audio RSS for Generation Lazy. Useful tool or content theft overboard?
Posted at 6:01 PM
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Isn't the point of having a music blog to frame the music for people? Tell them why it should be of interest to them?
This hijacking makes me sad.
(Not to mention what this will do to everybody's bandwidth...)
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I don't think the point of a MP3 blog is to tell people why certain music should be of interest to them -- but perhaps it is the fun of it. I have to say it is an interesting development.
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As an mp3 blogger, I personally don't really like it. We get special permission from bands and labels to post what we do, and then this douche comes along and hijacks our shit.
That said, some of the other robots think it's a nifty little application and great way to get more music.
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it's bad enough you have people who visit only to skim through blogs to download things without reading what you have to say.
and like shawn said, that's horrible for anyone who has to cough up extra cash for, basically stolen, bandwidth.
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I think the application would be better off if it aggregated the post along with the link. Often times I will download a song from an mp3 blog solely based on the description. While it may make it easier to aggregate more music to hear, it somewhat definites the purpose of an mp3blog which I think is to talk about the music as well. I feel sorry for the bandwidth that it will probably rape as well. But adding a simple rule in .htaccess to reject all users refered from that domain should be simple enough to stop them if you host the mp3s yourself.
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Let's put it this way: I get a lot out of the site that I do lately, but if I *didn't,* something like this would really make me wonder why I even bother putting in the effort to write the site as best as I can.
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Elbo.ws aggregates post and gives mp3s:
http://elbo.ws
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http://elbo.ws is pretty cool and it's searchable too.
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Elbo.ws is my choice of aggregators as well.
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Overboard. This just makes it easy for mindless collectors. I actually like to read the comments on Audio Blogs. It's like the friend I never had with a superior collection and knowledge.
If this catches on it could make bandwidth costs untenable for the little bloggers and really curtail an awesome use of the net.
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hey, did anyone actually check out the site before bitching about it? the mp3s are mirrored on the hype machine server, so there's no 'hijacking'. what geek would be that evil?
i think people are missing the point of the site. the important thing here is the playlist option, which i've been using because i don't always have time to visit xn blogs, read all the posts, dowload individual songs, add them to itunes, etc. lazy? maybe. but sometimes i just want to hit a button and hear some music i haven't heard before, and if something piques my interest, i visit the blog to find out more. stereogum is the only one i read everyday, though, so i was really dismayed to see the harsh words.
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i've wrote him a letter to remove my RSS content from his site. I tink this removes the interest and the sharing spirit of my audioblog (which is written in French). even the Amazon links are being detourned, without verification.. leading to strange amazon results when the reference doesn't exist : sometimes it suggests Anrea Bocceli ! oh my.
david
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>> Zoya
If he's not hijacking bandwith, he's hijacking the amazon affiliation money some bloggers get ...
And that's leaving apart the fact that he's giving out the music out of context ...
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i checked this out. and don't like it. he's scraping the RSS feed i provide as a convenience. hell, my feed is in french, i doubt he reads/understands it even. and he hijacks my amazon partner links. great, i spend hours working on this blog, i also pay all my hosting and bandwidth, and he comes and leeches everything out, chucks all of my work aside and encourages people to binge on downloads instead of looking, discovering and participating. and tries to make money on my back. [i only use authorised downloads on my blog, and am far from covering costs, so don't imagine that i'm screwing the artists here.]
i want out. and i'd like a way of controlling my rss feed to block people like this.
//j
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WOW! An even EASIER way to STEAL! ........Whatever happend to buying a cd??
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Here's a clue: if you don't want people using your RSS content in unintended ways, *don't publish it*. You can choose to publish excerpts instead of your entire post. You can strip out all the links so people have to click through to your site. You can deny access to external referrals. It's your blog, it's your content, you can do whatever you want.
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Hi Stereogum,
Anthony from the Hype Machine here, and I hope to take this chance to discuss some of the things a few of the posters have pointed out.
I've created this site to let people find something new and to also facilitate discovery of quality bloggers, but in my case it happens in a
sequence which seems to make some people uncomfortable: people listen to music first then read the posts.
This has actually happened to me. I heard a Killer Instinct CD that Rival Dave posted on his Radio KRUD blog (http://radiokrud.blogspot.com/) and found a new blog that I now check regularly. I couldn't believe someone else actually liked a SNES game soundtrack from 1996 (http://radiokrud.blogspot.com/2005/04/killer-cuts.html )!
Same happened with songs:illinois (http://songsillinoismp3.blogspot.com/) where for the first time in my life I heard Kimya Dawson (http://songsillinoismp3.blogspot.com/2005/04/i-cant-resist-kimya-dawson-post-any.html). The three tracks that craig posted have been on repeat on my iPod for the past couple of days.
These are just two examples, but I hope that my site will let many others discover music as well as bloggers in a similar way.
Bandwidth: I've done everything possible NOT to burden the blogs that I carry on my site with extra downloads.
The 'download' links serve songs via Coral - a NYU service (http://www.coralcdn.org) that caches frequently accessed files across a widely distributed network of their servers. Most songs on the front page are cached quickly and downloads proceed from the Coral network. This means that bloggers' bandwidth is not used.
The winamp/iTunes audio streams are served directly from my server using my bandwidth, for which I pay out of my own pocket.
If elbo.ws had the same regard for the bloggers listed on their site, maybe they would not put direct links to mp3s in each of the posts - something they have been doing from day one. (Although I am sure this will be fixed by the end of the day)
Amazon links: I do not hijack any links. The 'amazon' links that appear next to most tracks on the site are simply search queries for amazon.com that search for the artist of the track. Yes, I do include my referral code in the links, but what is so strange about that?
Those links are there so that people can see what other CDs a certain artist has out and perhaps consider purchasing them.
If anyone has any more questions or wants to talk about anything at all, post here or drop me a line at anthonyv at brainlink dot com.
Thanks for reading,
Anthony Volodkin
http://hype.non-standard.net/
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you ever think maybe hes doing it because its cool frankly im tired of reading blogs to hear a shitty song this way i can just change tracks as desired. hes also hosting everything him self so dont be so scared of your precious bandwidth. also when i listen to this stuff in school i dont have time to read blogs if i like something i go to the blog and read the entry and other entries if i like it i come back, he does give the bloggers credit. also im sure if he wanted money out of it there would be tons of popups.
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stop the whining.
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i enjoy it. but it's clear that i'm extremely lazy, dumb, and illiterate.
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Oh noes!!1 I'm being recontextualized! This is awful, i'm not going to get asked to be an iPod DJ at the next Motherfucker party. And i've been paying so much to blogspot for hosting my writing!
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unless you created the songs yourself, you can't do anything about who posts or reposts them online. deal. and it's nice that you put effort into writing about the songs, but all this self importance about "my work" is ri-goddamn-diculous. if writing blurbs about music was real work, i wouldn't be doing it!
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I found this website via Hype Machine, which was linked by some other website. I added stereogum to my RSS reader, and now I don't miss a thing. I've also found about a half dozen other sites, too.
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It is work. Work can be fun, but it's still effort and, with a little luck and grace, a fulfilling achievement to make a good post. What's the point of blogging if you consider your own writing / opinions to be without some kind of value, aesthetic or otherwise?
If I wanted to just let people troll through my files, I'd just go to Kazaa and let the world have at it.
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So, let me get this straight. You don't mind sharing music and you want to share music to enhance your writing amd make your blog more attractive and increase your click-thru, but if people just skip the superfluous fluff and go straight for the ear nuggets its insulting to your sense of self?
O
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let me add to that in saying that if one really just wanted people to find out about a new band one would not be concerned with the means by which they do it. Ideally they will come to your blog, but if they discover the band by some other means then so be it. Right? Are you bloggers promoting bands at a grassroots level or are you posting music to promote your own writing so you can land an internship at Spin or some damned slack-jawed hipster place. Which is it? And the idea that everything is 100% permission based is ludicrous, I've seen the taken down links on m.f.r and I know no one is clearing Wu-Tang tracks that get posted.. If you want to see how shady this can get check out the pay-for-play at www.scenestars.net They post Kanye and Coldplay songs then charge unsigned bands $25 to put tracks up. Sure, there is bandwith to pay for, but some of this stuff is really disingenuous..
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"
If he's not hijacking bandwith, he's hijacking the amazon affiliation money some bloggers get ...
"
If your Amazon affiliate money is significant enough to matter to you... maybe you should consider not posting illegal MP3s, because you're running a business. The non-commercial angle has always seemed like a part of the "good faith" "promotional use" theory of why MP3 blogging should be tolerated by copyright owners.
As some above pointed out, there are now MP3 blogs which border on businesses. Scenestars is clearly making a play for cross-over success, Music (For Robots) has posted Record-company-provided MP3s with promo-bots on them. There's going to be stratification within the MP3 blog scene soon, and those who play ball with the record labels will benefit accordingly.
I've always been about MP3 blogs for the new music angle and the personal angle. I'd rather read empm3 or moe rex than someone who's become a de-facto part of the professional music press...
I admit I was a bit confused by hype.non-standard when I saw my first referrers from it, but since then it has already surpassed mp3blogs.org in terms of usefulness as a referrer. My files are hosted under a different subdomain (and he's caching them anyway) so these extra referrers are by definition people who are reading the posts. Frankly I'm all for it, and I particularly like the idea of streaming radio, which dude is paying out of his own pocket. That's sorta like a dream come true, being a part of this specialized radio station of "music people liked enough to share." I would like the url of my blog to be encoded into the stream somehow, but that's a minor technical quibble.
The other mp3 blog aggregators are in a state of desperate disrepair due to lack of editting/quality control/posting policy. I post my RSS feed because I want my content to be available to the widest possible audience. He's not re-publishing any content which was created by me (although I guess he does when I post original music ;D) but most importantly he is ATTRIBUTING what he is re-publishing. I see it as free hype, and I appreciate it. I like it when people read my blog.
Just my $.02.
=darwin
(www.nuclearbeef.com)
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First of all, The Hype Machine answered my mail and removed my blog. In that he is acting correctly. He sent a boilerplate mail saying how disappointed he was by the reaction. This part is -- IMO -- where he is trying to trick himself and the world.
1 -- mp3blogs lists the entry. they provide a discovery service and traffic
2 -- the Hype Machine is just an encouragement to download the mp3s. Ok, the posts were linked to [but not with the mp3s, although he has changed this]
3 -- he has not addressed the issue, at any moment, of the ethics of 'kidnapping' the amazon links.
Under pressure he has made improvements, and i would be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt --- but for the amazon kidnapping...
//jonathan
ps. -> darwin.
1 -- i don't post 'illegal' mp3s, just material with permission from the artists or the labels. I think i should encourage responsible and respectful use.
2 -- i don't make money from amazon. this is symbolic and far from covering my expenses, neermind my time. however it is the brazen cheek of the guy that annoys. deeply.
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Jonathan,
1. It seems that we fundamentally disagree on whether The Hype Machine is also a blog/music discovery service, much like mp3blogs.org. I've found that a lot of people actually use the Winamp/iTunes playlist feature to listen to a couple of songs (vs. just clicking download and leeching everything in sight), and if they stumble upon something interesting, they check out the blogs - or so the bloggers' referrer stats seem to say.
2. Yes, I do shift the focus to the actual songs themselves, facilitating listening (and as a result, downloading) of the tracks. Is this encouraging p2p-style piracy where entire CDs are downloaded and revenue is lost? Not quite, since usually only single tracks (most are promotional, b-sides, and other oddities) are posted.
3. It amuses me that amazon links are even an issue, considering that the revenue (can you even call a couple of quarters that?) is not nearly enough to pay for anything.
However, the ethics behind the links are simple: bandwidth and server rental both cost money, and that is why I generate those amazon links.
As part of my effort to minimize the bandwidth-wise impact on bloggers, I stream the songs when they are played through winamp/iTunes from my server, and serve the downloaders songs via the NYU caching service as mentioned above - using minimal bandwidth from the bloggers. This adds to the costs.
So while I've been immensely enjoying putting the Hype Machine together, and covering the hosting expenses out of my own pocket, it's always nice if at least a small part of it pays for itself. That's all.
Thanks,
Anthony Volodkin
http://hype.non-standard.net/
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I have been a fan of MP3 blogs for a about a year or so now and have become a regular reader of Said the Gramaphone, Stereogum, Sixeyes and Copy Right? I would read more but I just do not have the time or patience to go through all of the great blogs out there. Hype Machine is a great aggregator for a one good reason. It allows users not to just go download a bunch of songs to their computers. Hype gives you an Mpu link to stream all of the songs. This is much different from the rest. I can therefore listen to all of the songs of the day and decide which ones I like (Usually about 4-5) and then find the blogs and read about them.
Reading about music is cool but when there is too much to read there has to be a way to weed out what you don't want to hear/see and I think Hype Machine does a great job of that. Can people take advantage of it? Yeah. But I think it helps more than hinders.
The last post here was May 8th. Nobody will read this most likely but I just wanted to put my two cents in.
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I like some aggregators. But right now I'm just pissed that my blog hasn't been added to the Hype Machine's blog list. Is it because of the whole "comments" issue? What the hell is with that? There are websites on the list pertaining to ninjas and robots...what about APES!?!
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This post just got linked by Signal vs Noise...
I discovered Hype Machine early, and emailed Anthony asking for our site to be added to the list of feeds he aggregates - hype.nonstandard.net is now one of our top referers.
We're an online magazine and "net label" releasing free, original mp3 material from a variety of artists.
We see aggregators like Hype Machine and el.bows as a great opportunity for our artists to get played and reach a wider audience. As long as there's attribution, we're happy.
Through aggregation on sites like Hype Machine, we've had over 3,000 downloads for a single track. I've no idea if this is a big figure in the world of mp3 blogging, but the artist in question is exteremly chuffed, and they've received some great emails and comments.
*Hype* Machine - the name speaks for itself. Releasing free original music on the net? Get a feed, and get yourself signed up.
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I really like the idea of Hype Machine. I know that I listen to the stream daily and check out posts that I find of interest. I also get many hits from his site, so that seems to be working. The Amazon referral thing is tricky. I don't use it myself as it seemed a bit lame to say I was doing this for fun and then try to make a buck off of it. If I couldn't afford the bandwidth for my site, I wouldn't have started it. I do understand that some people have crap hosting deals that cost them more, so I can see how they would go that way. At least he's not hotlinking, then I would have a problem. For now, I enjoy the site and the service he's providing.
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Here's my two cents on this inactive thread.
I use Hype Machine's today.pls to listen to blogs' mp3 files for 3-4 hours each day at work, and keep a minimized browser handy for reading blog entries of the songs I like.
I've been doing this for two weeks. In that time have bought four albums of groups I'd never heard of (Bishop Allen, the Happy Bullets, Verbal) or had never heard (Apples in Stereo).
So the groups should be happy: I'd've never bought these albums without HM.
The bloggers should be happy: HM is bringing them traffic to read articles, but caches their mp3s to save their bandwidth.
And I'm happy 'cause I'd never have the time or motivation to visit all the mp3 blogs on my own. The playlist, plus links to the blog articles, is very convenient... so the only one not happy is my wife for my spending all this money on records... :)
Charles
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IMO, Anthony Volodkin did it right. you have to risk something to be innovative. mp3blogs.org is hijacked anyways, web nymphs are into mixing up all kinds of sources, and webjay is too often stuck in technical advancements. besides the stealth beta-name "hype dot non standard" this service is just smartly done, collective but user centric, it just works, and will be hopefully lead to the next big thing after podcasting. as others have said, there is no collaborative filtering service, lastfm, pandora or whatsoever, which is as smart as a bunch of dedicated bloggers, wading through masses of new releases. this is what (free form, dj driven) fm radio should do for you, and probably did 25 years ago. look after lucas gonze as the next Adam Curry and check out XSPF... if anyone here is following the scene of netaudio since 1996 would agree, this is where it should go :) in the best case combining icecast/podcast and fm broadcast indeed.. if there would be only a electronica / idm / experimental branch of it.. including sites like pod.de-bug.de
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big up to hype machine: i found several blogs that i have now added to my blog circuit (and visit regularly) and have been turned on to new artists that i otherwise may never have heard (and purchased the vinyl). granted there's a lot of crap on it, but the system works... for now.
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Interesting thread. I am actually conducting a research paper in college right now, trying to determine the effect of mp3 music blogs on record sales.
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The Andrew Meyerhoff Project, a collaborated effort between the Shell Shuckers, Faraway Ensemble, and Okinawa Day Eyes, and featuring songs written, or co-written, by Andrew Meyerhoff will be having a premier release early/mid March. Styles span Eagles to Alicia.
Check it out, Andy
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It's actually pretty funny reading the early commets from a couple of years ago. I wonder if those same people think the same thing as back then? They sound exactly like the RIAA. Conservative and scared of the applications (and implications) of new technology.
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