I've been using The Hype Machine for maybe 6 months, but it's slowly become the only place I listen to new music.

It's diverse, entertaining, and there's always an easy link to find out more about a good track. It serves the same purpose as Pandora and any number of streaming internet radio stations, but the collective choices of the blogosphere are just so much better.

Earlier this summer I thought it was funny that a completely unknown (to me) musician named Lily Allen was always at the top of the artists list along with Thom Yorke, Gnarls Barkley, Beck, etc. But actually she's really catchy and fun and I found myself looking forward to her appearances on the popular tracks page.

I also really like that the popular tracks page is distinct from the recent tracks on the front page- I usually use the popular playlist, but sometimes I feel like a more random sampling and go with the recent ones.

Finally, the plethora of playlist formats is great, and definitely the right way to go.

And yes, I almost titled this post "living up to the Hype". Shoot me now.

Update: one thing I meant to say is that I think discovery methods like The Hype Machine are so popular because they're essentially egoless. With an artistic product like music, I believe how one discovers a new artist dramatically affects the opinion developed. A service like this one makes every new discovery feel organic and personal because it arrives from an aggregate opinion, and no "recommendation debt" is incurred.

Does that make sense?

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