What If You Owned Hypebot?
Hypebot is an ever evolving idea: part news, part opinion and part open forum for all aspects of the new music industry. And as the August fourth year anniversary of the blog approaches, I've been thinking about making some changes and adding new features to make it Hypebot an even more useful resource. So, I'm asking you, my brilliant, creative and cutting edge readers:
If you owned Hypebot,
what would you do differently?
what would you do differently?
For example, would you:
- Add a page of charts from 2.0 sources like top music blogs, music on Twitter?
- Add a forum or social networking component?
- Share more D.I.Y. tips?
- Cover more indie label news?
- Publish more or less major label news?
- (Your brilliant idea here.)
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Firstly I honestly feel you guys do a great job and have been on the ball all the way through since i started following you when you first started some time ago. As an indie label (fledgling i might add) owner I rely on you guys for very valuable indie type information and you do a great job of collating a lot of it and in some ways aggregating it i suppose. I love your DIY sections too and all the little operational gems you usually feature relevant to indie artists and labels. I also appreciate how when you cover majors there is always a kind of “and this is how it affects indies” flavour to it (i dont know if thats deliberate). So there is very little i would change in terms of the content except maybe add much more to make it more of a forum for indie labels to discuss real issues/trends/ideas/opportunities etc as part of the site too. I get so excited when you have interviews with successful indies of varying sizes sharing what they do/did etc and thats what makes you love you guys. your polls are usually spot on too and reflect a lot of the thoughts/concersn/issues indies are facing on the ground so well done on that front. Keep it up guys but please – add more!!!
I was going to say this the other day, Hypebot is one of my favourite blogs for quality signal, most of what comes up on hypebot is relevant, whereas a lot of blogs that post multiple times each day you just end up skimming the headlines.
Sure there’s room for deeper analysis and more thorough articles but don’t let that clutter the quality info stream you’re providing at the moment.
I agree with the first two comments, great site, more please. I do notice though that sometimes you tend to cover too little about too much vs. too much about a little. Ideally, I’d like to see less posts, but longer articles.
I think all us are living times where less is more .
The size of Hypebot will be the same , if I owned .
Indies are D.I.Y. on the root . I’ll put more D.I.Y. tips because we’re living DOitYourself ( and indie ) times also – and not only in Music . I presume that this kind of tips arouses the curiosity and the action .
Hypebot is my favorite source for industry news. The longer posts can’t compete (in my mind) with the in-depth analysis that you get be subscribing to blogs written by ‘independent’ specialists that have detailed knowledge in one area or another.
It seems that news should be news, editorial should be editorial, DIY Tips should be DIY Tips, etc.. I would like to see more ‘news’, less editorial and links to great advice written by others around the web..
For me there is a news hole (here) when it comes to the live music scene. It would be great to have a better understanding on a weekly basis of the trends, size and scale of the ever-changing live music scene. For example, Live Nation has been opening House-of-Blues-sized venues around the country.. How’s that working out for artists, labels, etc? 360 deals are a hot trend, how’s that working out for management and labels?
The Music Middle Class is growing – so they say… Is there any proof? There’s also a lack (everywhere) of information that can demonstrate that people are making money in this business.. Can you provide more insight and some actual numbers / case studies that prove this out..
Just my thoughts
Offer more analytics in addition to links like Coolfer once did.
I would perhaps improve the aesthetic impact of hypebot. Detailed posts are great, but the number on each page is a little alarming. I might curb the number of posts on each page. It would be a little more user(‘s scrolling fingers)-friendly.
I love the site. I come here everyday. But, I would add a forum, that would be neat. I think you have a very nice balance between indie and major. I would say it’s even perfect. But it would be interesting to add a forum and maybe a little more DIY tips from experts. But like I said, awesome website.
I think there should be a dedicated area to streaming industry interviews (either from conferences or from arranged interviews with Hypebot). This would need to continuously offer new interviews. I don’t think there is an industry blog that goes deep on this. The Music Void do their bit but it’s sporadic.