Many Internet users use the Hype Machine to discover new music and music blogs. The mp3 blogs that Hypem links to often include download links of the mp3 that they review, the Hype Machine on the other hand does not offer that service, it links to mp3 shops like iTunes or eMusic instead where the songs or albums can be purchased.

the hype machine

The mp3 songs can be played directly in the web browser if the Adobe Flash player is installed, no option is provided if Flash is not installed on the other hand. Songs are played one after the other starting with the mp3 the user selected to play.

The following guide explains how to download mp3 from The Hype Machine website even if Adobe Flash is not installed.

Hype Machine download links

This is a userscript that is compatible with the Firefox web browser. It places download icons next to each title on The Hype Machine website.

hypem mp3 download

A right-click on the icon and the selection of Save As will download the mp3 to the local computer. A left-click on the other hand tries to play the file in Firefox. The files use cryptic names and it is recommended to edit the names to reflect the song title and artist. Mp3 tags are included in each file so that it is possible to rename the songs after downloading them or by using a software like mp3 tag to bulk change the names.

The userscript offers several keyboard shortcuts that are helpful on the Hypem website as well:

/: activate search field
p: play previous track in the current playlist
n: play next track in the current playlist
k: select previous displayed track
j: select next displayed track
o: play selected track
v: open selected blog post in new tab
s: toogle Favorite for the currently playing track

Hypem.com HTML5 player

The Chrome extension Hypem.com HTML5 player has been developed by the developer of the userscript. The mp3 downloads are displayed in the same way, a save icon is displayed next to each title.

hype machine mp3

The Chrome extension replaces the Adobe Flash player on The Hype Machine website with an HTML5 player. The keyboard shortcuts have also been expanded:

* Key for Previus track: v
* Key for Play/Pause track: b
* Key for Next track: n
* Seek backward: left
* Seek forward: next
* Volume up: up
* Volume down: down
* Mute/unmute audio: m
* Show download links: d
* Show/Hide notification: i
* Show/Hide BigPlayer: f

All options that the extension provides can be edited in the right sidebar on each Hypem page.

hypem download

Both the userscript and the Chrome extension provide the means to download mp3 from the Hype Machine website. If you know of another method let us know in the comments.

You find a good mixture of established artists in the list including songs by Bif Naked, Underoath or Warren G but the majority of songs comes from artists that most visitors probably never heard of. This does not necessarily mean that this is bad music. It is actually a good way of discovering new artists that are not that in the focus of mass media.

The downloaded songs have been encoded with 192 Kbit and it is likely that all songs are encoded in this bitrate. Music can be sorted by letter or genre which helps to find the right music genre or artist.

There is no word yet on the duration of this promotion. Thanks goes to jagslive for sending us the tip.

Esnips have added a referrer check to the music player which means that users can only download songs if they initiate the download with the correct referrer. The process of downloading files from Esnips is therefor extended by one step.

Most steps stay the same on the other hand. The user visits the Esnips website and opens a page that contains a music file that is played in the Esnips player or perform a search and copy the links pointing to the music files to the clipboard. The url of that page is copied into an Esnips download link generator which converts the encrypted download link to the unencrypted one. The step that has changed is the last one. Instead of downloading the music from Esnips directly or pasting it into a download manager the user has to paste the unencrypted url back into the web browser to be able to download it. That is an inconvenience but still better than not being able to download the music from Esnips at all.

Step 1: Visit Esnips

Step 2: Copy Link URL

Right-click a link and copy it to the clipboard or copy the link from the address bar

Step 3: Paste the link and convert it

Now visit a script that can convert Esnips links so that they point to the correct url that can be used to download the mp3 files from Esnips. One script that can do it is Zuhaib’s Esnips Link Generator.

Step 4: Download

Copy the Download Link and Paste it back into a browser tab. The download for the correct mp3 file should pop up immediately.

SSMunch [via Go Web 2.0] seems to search the three websites eSnips, iJigg and MP3 Realm. That’s at least the three that can be selected individually before performing a search, the only other option is ALL which apparently searches all three of them. A search for Madonna – yeah that’s my default search term when I test mp3 search engines – revealed 69 result pages with 20 songs each. Not all songs that were listed were actually Madonna songs, covers were also included and one of the first was David Hasslehof with La Isla Bonita. I had to get this one !

Some other tests did bring up lesser results but still enough to make this an impressive music search engine. The website is very responsive and good to navigate, music downloads are rather slow though. The one thing that I do not like that much is the way the Listen link has been implemented. If you click on listen a new page opens with controls to start the playback of the song.

It would be far better if the controls would open on the same page instead. A playlist would be nice as well. Still if you want to download songs SSMunch provides you with a way to do that.