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Posts tagged Music
The Hype Machine re-launch website with HTML5 technology
Dec 17th
Popular music discovery service The Hype Machine has rolled out a major upgrade to its website interface. The Hype Machine is a service with a social media element which aggregates posts from music blogs across the internet and allows users to listen to them and ‘like’ them. The most ‘liked’ songs posted in the last three days show up in the Hype Machine chart, allowing users to get a great overview of what’s popular online at that very moment.
The website previously relied on Flash technology to play music to users, but has now switched to the up and coming standard ‘HTML5′. This allows the website to be used on many of the latest smartphones and tablets, including the iPhone, iPod touch [update: iPhone/iPod touch support is not confirmed by Hype Machine and users are reporting issues with it] iPad, and Android phones and tablets. The website certainly seems to be running much more efficiently after the re-design.
Other improvements include the consolidation of songs posted on multiple blogs into one entry. Instead of seeing the same song from three different blogs as three rows in the playlist, you now see only one, allowing the user to better judge the popularity of the song.
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Music based social network iTunes Ping gains only 2000 artists in two months
Nov 5th
Apple’s new ‘Ping’ social and music discovery network has only added two thousand artists in the two months since it went live, Mashable reports, despite garnering a massive user base numbering in the millions. The usefulness of the social network is questionable when there is a distinct lack of bands and artists for users to interact with.
According to Jeff Price, the founder of music distributor TuneCore, Apple has a rigorous sign up process for artists, so that artist profiles that are created belong to the real artist only. This quality control process is designed to avoid the pitfalls of websites like the soon-to-be relaunched Myspace, where users make unofficial artist pages making discovery and interaction with the actual artist very difficult.
However, the application process itself involves music distributors like TuneCore and CDBaby, and can take some time. Many artists were in fact completely confused as to how to apply for a profile in the first place, prompting Apple to release a submission guide.
Have you tried out Apple’s new service? How did you find it? Send a few comments our way!