First a random curious thought, when did passports become cool things for rappers to own and rap about. They’re available for the purchasing, they cost less than most rapper clothes, a hell of a lot less than a bottle of cognac, and are nothing compared to the cost of the ridiculous cars they bling out with pizza pan wheels. Not that I don’t love the bling, but I’ve just listened to four songs in a row that name check passports.
Second, a relatively old discovery that I’d like to plug: Hype Machine. I have a feeling that most cool people have already seen this, but I’d like to register my own approval. Quite literally it’s the first time that anyone’s bothered to apply intelligence to music on the Internet.
While the various forms of legal and illegal downloads have certainly been nice to use: a number of things have remained fixed: first that music still takes the same amount of time to listen to and you can only listen to one song at a time. So even if you have a huge library of music, you have to be selective about what you listen to. Second, the means of promotion has not significantly changed. In Napster/Kazaa/Bittorrent/etc you had to search for titles and artists to get music. In iTunes Music Store and the various other commercial download services there is some means of statistical aggregation but not very much and not very good. They generally agree entirely with the Billboard chart.
However there have been a few good developments in the internet music arena: mainly myspace, which has now mostly gone to a teenage hangout but still serves some of its original purpose as a means to allow artists to release tracks independently. It is particularly great for remixers and production-minded people because they can employ an entirely digital process and then release without any hassle. A number of dancefloor hits have been born and nurtured on myspace until they found commercial releases.
Second are recommendation services like last.fm which attempts to aggregate play data in a sort of billboard fashion and then generate recommendations to users based on their preferences. Like download services which rely on search these serve to reinforce old favorites rather than to introduce people to new music. Another notable recommendation service is the Pandora Project which analyses music to find similarities. This tends to find amazingly similar music, so if you suggest the Klaxons, you will get bands that sound exactly like the Klaxons: screamy bands with high pitched electronic noises and distorted guitars. That’s impressive but very few people can stand listening to Klaxon-like music forever. The system doesn’t determine if the music is /good/, just if it is audibly similar.
So finally we arrive at something new and cool: The Hype Machine. The hype machine is a sort of digg of music (or perhaps a technorati). It indexes mp3 blogs where crazy enthusiasts blog tracks that they currently like. The key part here is that they include the track itself. Then hype indexes all these tracks and keeps tabs on their popularity. So by going to hype machine and clicking on the popular link, you get a very current view of what’s cool on the Internet now (for the last 3 days). If a track is HUGE it will stay on for a week or two, as people all chip in no just a copy of the track but also their opinions about the track.
So in this sense the mp3 linked on the blog becomes more of a unique identifier that hype can use to track positive comments about the track. Because no one is being paid, no one is being forced to listen to crap so there are no negative reviews, only people ridiculously excited about a bit of music. And much of the music is “white label” or comes off myspace, as are rarities and radio rips (especially from hard to gets like Radio 1’s Live Lounge).
The greatest thing about hype machine is summarized at the top of every hype machine page: “Fall in love with something new”. A listen at Hype Machine is guaranteed to introduce you to something you’ve never heard before, and is nearly certain less than 50% of the Top 100. Let’s say you want to hear a remix: well search for the track and you’re guaranteed that if someone has remixed it (and it’s any good) someone’s blogged it. If you really want to live on the lid, just listen to the straight stream of music from the front page, but otherwise the popular page is the best place to stick. I personally guarantee that you’ll go from musical midget to maestro in two weeks of regular listening.
The down side is that while the blogs are distributed and therefore hard to block, the hype machine itself is of dubious legality, and I’m sure lawyers at RIAA will cease and desist it soon. This would be idiotic because it’s a promotional vehicle and actually encourages you to buy music rather than to break the law. But that’s never stopped them before so enjoy it while it lasts.
