by SHANE SINNOTT

If you use the Internet to download music, and particularly if you treat a high-speed connection like a giant free jukebox, one that can sate your desire to hear the original Neil Diamond version of “Red Red Wine” at 2 a.m., then the Hype Machine (www.hypem.com) is your Google. It’s always there, and you don’t really think about it much till it’s gone, which is what happened to millions of freeloaders a few weeks ago when a visit to the Hype Machine resulted in a page announcing the reworking of the site. Shortly thereafter, there was a bold announcement that the new site wouldn’t go live until 10,000 people were visiting it simultaneously, and a ticker showing the current number of visitors, which is a pretty great, uh, hyping device if I’ve ever seen one.

It finally launched on Oct. 16, and the big change was—surprise!—a social networking element. You can now create a profile to bookmark and display stuff you like, and display it publicly by directing people to hypem.com/yourusername. Also, if you’re a zeitgeist follower, you can now use a “spy” button, which shows you what songs other users are listening to the moment you search, and what’s been searched for in the last 30 seconds. The big pisser is that they removed the very useful Flash player that allowed you to skip through and instantly play search results, though for the time being, you can still get to it by using this link: tinyurl.com/ytv9et.

The new Hype Machine has the requisite links to buy the songs you find on iTunes and Amazon, but what’s most interesting about this corporate partnership is the acceptance that if one is downloading a single song, it’s basically okay. The labels, obviously, are trying to get people to pay for all the music they listen to, but a site like the Hype Machine, it seems, can open up new revenue streams that allow them to look the other way on the downloading of singles. Our giant free jukebox is alive and well, and it looks like it will remain that way, friends, for the foreseeable future.