Hype Machine, the much-loved MP3 blog aggregator service, has long been the place to go to find great tracks and music reviews on the net. In October of last year, the site got a big makeover, which included new social networking features like user profiles where you could list your favorite blogs, bands, searches, and friends. Now, Hype Machine has taken the social aspect a step further with their revamped Dashboard section, which introduces social scrobbling features, just like Last.FM offers, along with other new features and an updated layout.
For anyone into discovering great music, Hype Machine is a valuable resource. They continually track MP3 blogs, caching the tracks found on the blogs to reduce the bandwidth on the bloggers’ servers. You can play the tracks on the site, but you can’t download them, as Hype Machine encourages you to supports the artists by purchasing the tracks from retailers like Amazon, eMusic, or iTunes. DRM-free retailers are given special preference by putting those links first.
As a Hype Machine user, you have a “Dashboard,” where you can keep tabs on your favorite songs, friends, blogs, and more. Last month, Hype Machine integrated with Last.FM, so tracks you played on Hype Machine would scrobble to your Last.FM profile. But now, they will scrobble to your Hype Machine profile, too.
The scrobbled tracks show up under your brand-new “Listening History” drop-down section. You can also spy on your Friends’ History and Obsessions, and they can spy on yours. And if you want to spy on what people in other countries are listening to, you can hit up the Spy page, which now includes filters for states/provinces and countries, whereas before, it only focused on the U.S.
New Dashboard
If you haven’t checked out Hype Machine lately (or ever), now is a good time to try. The new scrobbling features, spy filters, and not to mention the Last.FM sync make Hype Machine a nice add to your social music playlist.
