Hype Machine vs Future Tape
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Hype Machine
Discover new music through posts from hundreds of music blogs. Listen to tracks, read articles, and create a personalized feed by following sites and friends. Stay updated with weekly unreleased albums and newsletters.
- Music blog aggregation
- New track discovery
- Customizable music feed
- Follow sites and friends
- Weekly unreleased albums
- Music newsletter
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Every day, thousands of people write about music they love—and it all ends up here. We track posts across hundreds of music sites and bring them all together for an endless stream of new tracks. Listen, read posts, favorite tracks, and follow sites and friends to create your own custom music feed. —————— Hype Machine has been introducing people to breaking new artists since 2005. Questions about our app? Get in touch with us at iphone@hypem.com
Future Tape
Explore and play music from various platforms like Catalog, Sound, Nina, and Zora. Discover trending tracks, browse charts, and search for specific releases within a unified player.
- Play tracks from multiple platforms
- Explore trending charts
- Search all releases
- Unified music player
- Discover latest tracks
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Future Tape is an experimental player for tracks on the Catalog, Sound, Nina and Zora platforms. Listen to the latest tracks, explore charts, and search through all the releases.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Future Tape at every 5 days against Hype Machine's every 2 months. Future Tape also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 73%) and rating (5.0 vs 4.7). Hype Machine's advantage is ratings volume (188 vs 8). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Future Tape holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Hype Machine has 188 ratings behind it against 8, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 73% of Hype Machine's written reviews are positive against 100% of Future Tape's.
Hype Machine ships an update every 2 months, Future Tape every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on October 15, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Hype Machine | Future Tape |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (188 ratings) | 5.0 (8 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 73.5% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 188 — better | 8 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Every 5 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.1 | 16.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 21 MB | 15 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 12+ |
| Developer | The Hype Machine, Inc | Zora Labs, Inc. |
Customer experience
Hype Machine
Future Tape
Bugs and requests
Hype Machine
Reported bugs
3 issues- Crashes on launch after update
- Favorites playlist causes crashes
- Playback issues when switching apps
Requested features
7 requests- Add search functionality
- Allow access to user's favorite songs
- Improve playlist/library management
- Implement shuffle/repeat options
- Optimize for iPad
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- Improve Bluetooth streaming
- Add ability to skip/seek through tracks
Future Tape
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Hype Machine
No in-app purchases
Future Tape
No in-app purchases
