Anything that exists as a recorded sound might, hypothetically, find its way onto the site. Still, it's worth noting that there are no technical barriers to inclusion on the Hype Machine. And the blog world favors the bleeding edge of what's current, so you have better odds of hearing something middling and extremely recent than something vintage and great. You'll find a lot of rap, indie rock, and electronic music on Hype, and not a great deal of, say, chamber jazz. In practice, it draws mostly on blogs written by pop-conscious young people, and so the selection skews toward certain genres at the expense of others. In theory, there are no restrictions to the kind of music you might find on the Hype Machine. And for pop fans, this is one of the most exciting things I can think of. Where it says "You may also like this," clicking on the word "this" will cause the site to spotlight, at random, one of the thousands and thousands of tracks it's lately registered. Thus far, I've always come up empty.)īut hidden down at the bottom of the Hype homepage is another feature, the randomizer, that flips the idea of targeted search on its head.
(Every few months I'll check and see if the Hype Machine can give me anything on Matthew Jay, an English songwriter with a lovely, lilting voice who fell to his death from an apartment building in 2003. The biggest limitation is that you're at the mercy of the world's bloggers-if you're trying to find an artist or a song that no blogger has written about, you're out of luck. If you just want to hear her winsome song " Sunrise," search for that instead you'll get the song, as well as any covers, live versions, remixes, or mashups that may be out there (plus any other song that happens to have the word "sunrise" in the title).Īs a search engine, the Hype Machine can't always give you what you're looking for. You'd search for her name, and if any of the Hype Machine's several hundred blogs has posted a song by Jones within the last few years, it'll come up and you'll be able to listen. If you've never visited the Hype Machine, here's how it works: Say you want to hear something by Norah Jones. CNN and Wired have both covered it, and Nick Hornby sang its praises in The Guardian last year. You may already be familiar with the Hype Machine, which has been around since 2005. One method I'd suggest is a search engine called the Hype Machine, which indexes hundreds of handpicked music blogs and takes notice every time one of them posts an mp3. They're the tip, but what if you want to hear from the rest of the iceberg? (Maybe I'm listening to the wrong stations.) Anyway, radio DJs only represent a tiny fraction of the world's music lovers. But most corporate stations have fairly predictable playlists that they don't stray from, and indie radio is a crapshoot-and not one that I've ever found immensely rewarding. There's the radio, where, it should be said, I've continued to discover exciting songs well into my iPod-owning years. LATER IN THIS SERIES: Tomorrow: Joe Fassler on Daytrotter Friday: Sam Machkovech on BitTorrent sites Pandora, the Web radio service that suggests songs and artists based on your input, is a neat bit of technical wizardry, but it'll only steer you toward things that are already at least somewhat familiar.Īnd no matter what you do, you, the listener, are still at the center of all this: your friends, your trusted critics. Noel Murray, one of the sharpest critics around, can only recommend what he likes. Your friends might have great taste, but they can only, in the end, recommend what they like. My guess is that most people find new pop the same way I do: you hear about things from friends, you find a few critics you trust, and you keep your ears open.īut each of these approaches puts you in a room of a certain size.
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Club," or "I heard this in a movie trailer two years after everybody else on the planet." "That was a Christmas present in 2005," I'd say, or "That's from my friend Kathleen," or " Noel Murray had great things to say about this at The A.V. For just about every song in my library, I can tell you how it came to be there-where I heard about it or who gave it to me. How do you find music that has nothing at all to do with you?Īssuming your music collection looks anything like mine, this may be a harder question than it seems. Today, Alex Eichler discusses The Hype Machine. In this three-part series, we'll look at websites that showcase artists and songs you don't already know by heart-but you'd probably like. In the age of the iPod, it's harder and harder to get exposed to new, interesting music.
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