Fast-Forward Through Music Blogs With Hype Machine

Description wired

Music-blog aggregator Hype Machine has taken the wraps off an innovative way of exploring new music on the web called Fast Forward.

Keeping track of even a small handful of music blogs can be a pain, so the Hype Machine has built considerable success from making the whole experience a lot easier. Fast Forward is the latest experiment in that, letting you quickly skip between songs while still letting you read the blogs where the music has been posted.

Click here to try out Fast Forward. You’ll get a sample of a song, with a large screenshot of the music blog that posted it below. Clicking the screenshot takes you to the page that posted it, so you can read about or download the full version of the track. Arrow keys, spacebar or the big > button can be used to skip to the next sample.

“We’ve been thinking about this idea since [South by Southwest] 2009, and after some further inspiration, thought to push this experience further. Fast Forward is like a spinning radio dial across radio stations curated by music bloggers,” said Anthony Volodkin, who founded the site, in a blog post announcing the experiment.

With more and more music posted to the web every day, it’s more important than ever to have effective filters. But the effectiveness of any particular filter is also quite a personal thing.