Zoom-in Online

This blog was contributed by Emily Katz, co-writer of music blog Kickin' The Peanuts.

The music aggregator - or search engine for those less in-the-know - Hype Machine has been experiencing a situation of false hype, and they're not going to let it slide.  Hype Machine released a statement yesterday titled "On Chart Integrity" explaining their qualms. After changing their "popular" page to reflect the amount of people favoriting the track, Hype Machine was informed that bands were creating fake accounts and "favoriting" artists' tracks in an effort to gain higher visibility in the Hype Machine charts.  While Hype Machine notes that "their efforts were not fruitful," they've now changed their system to be more like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes'. From now on, new users will be monitored and will only be able to mark their favorite tracks after their account is a few days old so that, "a new wave of manipulative accounts cannot influence the page even if they get past our other checks," Hype Machine said.

HypeMachine even included a list of alleged perpetrating bands. Guess these bands finally got their opportunity to be recognized. In other news, why are we not surprised to see that Mustard Pimp's integrity is up at stake?