Davis Freeberg’s Site Of The Weekend
This week’s site of the week(end) contest was really close, but in the end the Hype Machine ended up winning the honor, despite a last ditch write in campaign to try and give Viva Radio the spot 
The Hype Machine is one of the more controversial picks to win site of the week because, one of the many things that the site lets you do, is search and listen to pirated music on the internet. Hype Machine takes the position that they aren’t pirating themselves because they do not provide downloads to listeners, but they are rather just pointing streaming links to .mp3′s that other bloggers have loaded onto the internet.
Regardless of whatever ethically grey issues people have with the site, the Hype Machine is a great tool for finding new music and they really do encourage their listeners to support the bands by buying their music, if they like it. In addition to being able to stream many songs, you can also download an mp3 a crappy DRM infected file from either Amazon or iTunes, directly from the site. If you aren’t willing to pay for a DRM file, then the Hype Machine also lists upcoming performances for each band, so that you can support your favorite bands by seeing them live.
Hype Machine is a lot like TechMeme, only for .mp3s. They have a pretty extensive list of bloggers that regularly blog .mp3 files and whenever one of the bloggers adds a song, it automatically gets added to the front page of their site. Unlike Techmeme though, the hype machine actually tries to strip out the duplicate links to try and keep the site clean.
One bad part about the Hype Machine is that they only have .mp3′s and don’t do podcasts. Most people using the site are probably looking for music to begin with, but it would be neat to be able to see which podcasts were being talked about. It would help listeners better figure out which ones are worth taking the time to listen to and which ones we should take a pass on. There are of course other sites that specialize in podcasts, but personally, it’s a feature that I think that the Hype Machine should have.
Getting access to a bunch of great songs is cool, but one of my favorite parts of the Hype Machine is that they let you monitor the music by creating RSS feeds for bands or songs that you are looking for. This is a great tool for finding b-sides, covers or new music by your favorite artists. It also helps to serve as a good reminder to keep coming back and checking out the new stuff that shows up.
Congratulations to the Hype Machine on winning this shortened site of the week contest. The nominies for this week’s contest are listed below. You can vote in the sidebar. Voting will close on Friday morning, so get you votes in early. If you have a site you’d like to nominate for the site of the week, send me an email to Davis AT davis freeberg . com and it will be considered for nomination.
Posted on May 1st, 2007 by Davis
Filed under: Search, Site Of The Week, Technology, Web 2.0