It’s such lovely news today, our sister site MusicHype.com is a finalist for the Innovator Awards 2012.

We’re privileged to be up against some very stiff competition in our category. Congratulations to Booktrack, Jumpshift & Smallworlds for being our fellow finalists.

Our core technology, the Appreciation Engine, was born & built in New Zealand, so we couldn’t be prouder of the recognition in our homeland.

Best of luck to everyone in the awards and way to go Kiwis!…

Endless Flowers has been out for a while now, but I’ve only just gotten around to listening to it in the last week or so. The main reason for my delay is that it isn’t streaming on Rdio in my country (New Zealand). It’s interesting how this factor really influences my listening habits these days – if it’s not available for streaming, I am a lot less likely to give it a spin. It seems so silly in 2012 that regional restrictions are still applied to a fully digital medium – why would you not want every possible person listening to your music?…

I’ve gone through beta a number of times, with different companies. It’s always stressful getting ready to launch and figuring out how you’re going to manage & collect beta testers.

This year we discovered the beta system Prefinery. These guys have built a site that handles your beta submissions & management. Yes, we did high-five each other at the MusicHype office – we didn’t have to build our own beta management system on-top of our product.

Prefinery gives you all the customizable forms & emails you need to manage beta testers & invite.…

For the past 7 years, I have made music in the clouds/streaming subscription music services a personal mission. Early on, I was an “early adopter” to Rhapsody, a Real Networks company. Over the years, I’ve had the distinct pleasure to try them all (Rdio, Spotify, Deezer, GrooveShark, MOG, Rhapsody, Napster). Through this affinity and trial, I quickly discerned that this is the way of the future! Exhausting the fan with numerous hurdles to just hear music is futile and I’m super excited that the major labels have woken up to this world of frictionless music discovery and consumption.…

So much happens every day in the sea of social media. This is great for research, trend watching and keeping in touch. But reaching your fans is getting harder every day.

Your Facebook wall posts and tweets are messages in bottle that you toss out to sea. You cross your fingers and hope most of your fans are going to see it.

In fact that message bobs around, gets read by a few fans and eventually sinks to the ocean floor.…

In this age of electronic bombardment I sometimes feel like no one is listening. You put stuff out into the aether and nothing comes back…

When we first started to write we drew symbols in caves, developed petroglyphs and eventually created an alphabet. Each step allowed us to communicate further and with more accuracy. We were being heard – NEIGH!

I used to be a letter writer in my teens. It was the only way I could keep in touch with my oldest friend in Brisbane, Australia.…

I thought I knew all of the great forgotten bands: The Replacements, with their great songs, unpredictable live shows and self-destructive attitude; Big Star, with their perfect tunes at exactly the wrong time; Nick Drake, with his refusal to tour and corresponding failure to sell records, despite their melancholy brilliance. But somehow amongst all of these lost gems I managed to miss The Nerves.

It was Rdio that finally brought them to my attention. A colleague found them through an Rdio playlist resulting in The Nerves’ compilation album One Way Ticket appearing in my Recent Activity feed – a good illustration of the power of streaming media.…

Wow – what a great first week: praise, bugs and tweaks!

Opening the gate is always a scary moment for any startup, especially in Beta. There aren’t enough hours to get everything done; you’re sure you’ve tested everything, but know a few bugs are lurking, waiting for an unsuspecting member to find them. *Boo*

Thanks to you guys it we had a great starting week. You helped us find a a number of bugs and sent through smart suggestions.

We really appreciate you taking the time to connect with us. Getting early feedback helps us make MusicHype even better.…

It’s pretty exciting ’round here getting ready for our launch in 2 weeks – crikey! So this is a quick post to show where you can listen to the music we (Kevin, Mike, Jeff & Annabel) love.

Grooveshark
You can find us over with the good folks at Grooveshark. We’ve got a TasteMaker’s Best of 2011 playlist up. And you can check out our monthly playlists – see April’s Revisits (oldies but goodies) and there’s, of course, April’s Hot List (fresh tracks).

Rdio
If you’re an Rdio kind of kid we’ve got all those goodies on there too: The Best of 2011 – Hot List April 2012 – Revisits April 2012

Last Saturday (April 21st) was the fifth annual International Record Store Day. Taking place on the third Saturday of every April, the day celebrates the independent record store and is accompanied by a slew of limited edition vinyl releases only available on or around the day itself.

The purpose of Record Store Day is to encourage an enterprise that for a while looked to be a dying breed: the independent record store. However, thanks largely to the vinyl resurgence, independent record stores have been slowly but steadily popping up all over the placed, while their mainstream CD-selling high street rivals continue to close in ever-larger numbers.…