(Re)Start 2010
Posted by Justin Boland on Jul 20, 2010 | 8 comments
As you’ve already noticed, Audible Hype is under construction. It’s an ongoing re-design from the same team that did the World Around Records site. This might be a spare time kinda project, but we are on some Big Vision shit in 2010…
Audible Hype has grown way beyond anyone’s expectations in the past two years. I want to thank everyone who has given me encouragement, given me shit, and taken me seriously enough to give me an interview.
Eating Our Own Dogfood
I’ve talked about this a lot: promoting only yourself is a losing game. (Plus it makes you boring as fuck to talk to. I have literally had 10+ different rappers give me the exact same pitch in a single night.) I’ve been doing artist interviews all along, but it’s been shop talk — business focused conversations about the behind-the-scenes WORK they’re doing to get their careers off the ground.
So the first and biggest change here will be a parallel music blog. I’ve probably told a couple hundred people by this point that Audible Hype is not a music blog, and I will not post their EP / mixtape / beat tape / single. I’m really tired of typing that email out…plus, hot damn, I’ve had some really excellent submissions. (I’m looking at you, TeV95.) So it’s time for me to start eating my own dog food and running a promotional channel for the hip hop I believe in.
It seems insanely stupid to start up a whole new blog, new domain, new brand, new design — we’ve already got the right platform and the right audience right here.
Already Up: Hip Hip Business News Feed
We’ve already got one new feature up and running by popular request: a Links Feed, which I’ll be updating pretty much daily with the best articles and interviews I come across. It’s already up and running, so if you’re in the mood for some brainfood, check it out.
…But What Else?
Re-design is ongoing. We’ve got a lot of other changes in the oven right now, but I figure the best way to wrap this up is by turning the mic over to the readers…what changes would you like to see? What features does Audible Hype need? What brilliantly obvious idea are we currently overlooking because we’re too close to the project?
Any and all suggestions appreciated…thanks for reading, folks.
8 Comments
1 Quiet Entertainer says...
I love the link feed idea. Getting the same brain food that you're getting is great for someone who wants to learn from you even if I don't have the ability to process it the same way. But it's a start, though! I feel like if I see your links here instead of twitter that they somehow must be more important. Will that have an RSS feed?
Posted at 2:35 p.m. on July 24, 2010
2 nek4life says...
Yup the links section has it's own RSS feed, just set it up this morning.
AudibleHype.com: Latest Links
Posted at 2:38 p.m. on July 24, 2010
3 Ross says...
Can't wait to see what the rest of 2010 has in store for my favourite blog - The links section was a great idea, already subscribed!
Posted at 7:08 p.m. on July 24, 2010
4 juiceboxjackson says...
As sort of a design suggestion, it'd be nice to see how many times a piece has been commented on (kind of like it was before). I know its kind of a petty complaint but it's nice to see if there have been any new comments on an entry quickly so I can continue a discussion...or maybe you don't want the comment section to turn into a forum??
Posted at 1:19 a.m. on July 25, 2010
5 Clyde Smith says...
Hey, I've always appreciated the link to ProHipHop in the sidebar and I'll definitely be spreading the news there but, if you really want to hook people up, tell them about Hip Hop Press.
You may not be into press releases and most people send out so many they can't tell which had the most affect but folks who've only done their initial distribution through HHP have been really impressed by how widely that stuff gets picked up.
I actually may start collecting endorsements because I'm tired of people sleeping on this resource.
It's free. Anything that's on topic, announces actual news (loosely defined) and has a headline, more than 3 lines of text and a press contact with email or phone number for publication gets up.
The combined twitter feeds are close to 10k and lots of people pick stuff up or reprint it outright, sometimes crediting HHP, sometimes not.
Anyway, there's nothing else like it in hip hop media, though I'm not keeping up with newer sites so challenges to that claim are welcome.
We now post on hip hop, R&B;, dj's & dance, urban arts/fashion/film and major music industry news.
All pr to: hiphoppress(at)netweed(dot)com
Hope you don't mind the self promo for a site where I mostly promote other people. Kind of like you said do!
Posted at 3:51 p.m. on July 26, 2010
6 nek4life says...
@juiceboxjackson as you requested I added the comment count back into the design. The comments are something we think makes Audible Hype great and we'd love to promote more participation. We've tossed around the idea of switching to Disqus comments for the threaded comments and responses from other sources such as Twitter and Facebook, however at this point, we're not quite comfortable with rendering the comments using Javascript alone. Thanks for the feedback it's greatly appreciated!
Posted at 8:52 a.m. on August 6, 2010
7 juiceboxjackson says...
Not a problem, nek. I've already used the "new" feature today! Disqus sounds cool but I don't have any experience using it so I'm afraid I'm of little use there.
Posted at 5:53 p.m. on August 8, 2010
8 Justin Boland says...
Big thanks to everyone who responded, here and via emails. Clyde, I never understood hip hop press until now and I will definitely be using that in the future. Awesome idea.
The re-design has been an awesome clarifying process and I think Audible Hype is poised for some next-level shit. We haven't even rolled out some of the biggest changes yet.
Posted at 12:24 a.m. on August 19, 2010