What You Always Feared: The Internet Is Now More Important Than Your Friends

At least in terms of finding new shit to listen to. This graph is taken from the results of a straw poll put together by MP3 blog catch-all the Hype Machine to find out how its readers “discover new music,” and as you can clearly see, the Internet is kicking human contact’s ass!

Obviously a very not-so-scientific study, the results are noted by Hype Machine as “unsurprising” for a site that collects and filters a bazillion MP3 blogs, attracting a readership that’s already disposed to hunting and pecking through links rather than leafing through a review section, with print making a higher showing than I expected to be honest. Growing up (pre-Internet obviously, because I’m ancient and/or we were too poor for Compuserve), I can say that print, whether it was zines or even the daily paper, would have easily trumped my friends’ recommendation because they either had terrible taste or were exposed to only what broadcast media threw up. But I am a little surprised by the piss-poor showing from “intuitive” online radio, etc. in “Online Mechanical,” which the folks at Hype Machine reckon might have something to do with “algorithms for recommendations haven’t hit the tipping point of getting more rights than wrongs.”

Hype Survey Results: How Do You Discover New Music? [Hype Machine via ]