We rarely share posts that stray from songs themselves, but in the wake of us being removed from The Hype Machine's blog index yesterday (you can read about what they're doing on their recently released article regarding this all), we'd like to take some time to explain to you, our users, why this has unfortunately taken place. Yesterday, we were approached by The Hype Machine and received accusations that we were, in essence, colluding with a PR company by having their artists' music posted on our site in a sort of unfair manner that compromises what integrity The Hype Machine stands by. These sorts of things have never happened on our site. What was correctly pointed out by them was that, on occasion, we'll have guest writers (public relations persons) write posts for us (this has only occurred a handful of times) that just so happen to be about artists that they represent. This is an important distinction that needs to be understood. We are not posting any music for any reason other than because we believe that it's amazing, and it does not matter one bit to us who it is doing the posting after a track has been given the proverbial green light for publication. It's definitely admirable that The Hype Machine has been cracking down on blogs posting material for reasons other than the upkeep and proliferation of talent, but, disappointingly, they've lumped us with those harboring the denounced activities. It should be common knowledge by now that what's posted on our site is screened by us prior to it going out, and that we don't care what our relationship is with anyone regarding said posts. We are about simply good music, as we always have been, and we've not once been persuaded to post anything by anyone outside of our own camp. We're proud of all of the talent we've hoisted over our nearly eight years of existence as a blog, of our tight relationships with individuals working in the music industry, and of all the work done behind the scenes on our site. We're not able to employ writers yet, unfortunately, and so when we're slammed with new posts to give to you guys and need help with the volume of writing, we accept when an atypical contributor (like a public relations person) is able and willing to help out. They save us time and provide great insight on the act or artist that they're posting about, and we dig the support when it's able to work out (when we agree that the music being posted is up to our standards). We're utterly unfamiliar with any conflicts of interests that The Hype Machine has accused us of having. The Hype Machine's concern regarding bogus posts and practices regarding them is one that is absolutely necessary in this age of questionable music getting posted and passed around, and they have every right to do whatever they want on their own site which we've now been indefinitely taken off of. It's disheartening to know that fans, labels, managers, and, most importantly, the artists themselves, will be suffering as a result of this spectacular loss of exposure, but we'll keep doing our thing, regardless. The Hype Machine can continue to enforce their own practices, of course, and we'll continue to operate in the best ways that we know how, so, rest assured that we'll not ourselves be changing in any way. We'll continue to post the music that you love, and we'll never let nothing at all get in the way of that fact.
Why We're No Longer Within The Hype Machine