I have two new favorite things to listen to while working, Vocalo and the just-relaunched Hype Machine. Both are keeping me entertained today.
It pays to follow Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Twitter stream. In addition to getting a peek into his daily routine, you get glimpses of what he’s soon to cover on Read/Write Web, and you get to hear his reactions as he tries out new things. His first tweet about Hype Machine a couple of nights ago is what tipped me off. At the time, it was in closed beta and was just a big splash screen that said once 10,000 people were all looking at the page, it would launch. Marshall was in already and poking around with the beta. I’ll admit, his hype made me jealous of the fun he seemed to be having.
The ten thousand viewers appeared, the wraps have been taken off, and it’s now open to the public. It’s an aggregator/tracker for conversations about music all over the web, especially those that include mp3s. It’s a great place to discover new tracks, new artists, and new covers. The relaunch apparently added lots of new features and removed the flash popup player, but since I was new to the site, it’s all new to me. As soon as I pulled up the main page, I found something I wanted to listen to — The Arcade Fire covering Poupee de Cire, Poupee de Son by Serge Gainsbourg. I highly recommended it, and you can listen to it right there. It also has a nice alerts system that works through Twitter. Marshall’s coverage can be found here.
My other new copilot, Vocalo, broadcasts both over the internet and over a terrestrial radio station in the Chicagoland area, and draws its programming from its online community. From their about page: “We broadcast your stuff on the webstream and on 89.5 FM in Northwest Indiana and Chicago. Whether you make Vocalo.org your home blog (we’re all set up for that) or want to bring your content from other sites, we hope you’ll share your stories, photos, video and audio right here.” It’s been really fun to listen to. I haven’t experimented yet with contributing content, but I will report back when I do. I found it in someone’s del.icio.uses, but I forgot to note who. Thanks, whoever you were.
Hype Machine must be getting a ton of traffic, ’cause it’s SLOOOOOW.
I think someone must have just sat down on the tubes over there. It’s been zippy for me until you just mentioned it.