Thesixtyone Turns Social Media Up to Eleven*

Characterized by TechCrunch as “a Digg for Indie music,” my new favorite site of the week/month and beyond is thesixtyone.  

Thesixtyone serves up the latest Indie bands in a format that is as simple as it is dramatic, telling visitors that “new artists make music and listeners decide what’s good.”

With well-established sites like the Hype Machine and Pandora indulging my online music needs, why am I proclaiming my love for this self-described music adventure? Well in addition to music, thesixtyone has several interesting elements in social media and design to catch my attention. 
 

·         Focus: thesixtyone only offers Indie music. It goes deeper than it goes broad with 50,000 tracks uploaded by artists and music labels. This allows them to do one thing very well. 

·         User Control: Site visitors can listen to all 50,000 tracks and create playlists. This means users can listen to what they want and bands can upload what they want…this ability to customize the user experience ensures more repeat visits. 
 

·         Addictive Sharing: The site includes social gaming elements, giving you reputation points that encourage you to listen to more songs, rate them and then share them via Facebook and Twitter. More like foursquare than Pandora in this regard, the site tracks your efforts. 

If songs you “heart” get more popular after the fact, your reputation grows. You can also unlock badges but, much like foursquare, you’re not exactly sure what activity unlocks each badge. This of course encourages more activity on the site. Visitors even get reputation points if they are listed as having referred someone to the site. So tell them prblog tipped you off…my reputation depends on it. 
 

·         Simple, Beautiful Design: Site navigation is subtle, but not so simple that you can’t figure it out. This makes it easy for site visitors to immerse themselves in thesixtyone’s full-screen images and of course listen to the music. This combination of simple design, with music and images helps connect the listener to the artists vs. simply connecting the listener to thesixtyone. 
 

·         Info Bits for an ADD Audience: As each song plays, band schedules, back story and smaller images flash on and off the screen to keep your attention.
 

The end result of thesixtyone is an engaging social media listening experience that is…wait for it…music to my ears. Check it out.

*If you knew that the headline’s reference to “turn it up to eleven” is a quote from Spinal Tap? You get reputation points from me.
** Cross-posted to my work blog, Social Study.

Comments

[Ex-user]

Ah, good to know Sia, Sigur Ros, Katy Perry, Imogen Heap, Owl City, Marilyn Manson, etc. etc. are considered indie now.

Yes, you get reputation points. Are they good for anything? Nope. Leveling up, good for anything? Nope, not really. The way a level 1 listens to music and a level 21 is exactly the same. Speaking of listening to music, that's why I joined thesixtyone before the redesign. I wanted to listen to music, not have gigantic pictures shoved in my face.

It's funny that you bring up artists connecting to listeners because that is exactly what we lost with the redesign. Apparently, what we called simple communication was considered spam to Sam and James. Speaking of those two... well, just look at their Facebook page.

I'm glad you mentioned the ADD audience because that's exactly who T61 seeks to pander to now. Unfortunately, true to their nature, those types will be gone in a month. That's what Sam and James never figured out. The people who were there for months or years weren't there solely for the music (Garageband) or the game (Stereofame). A community was built. REAL connections were forged between artists and listeners. Apparently, that's no longer the "vision" of T61.

Uvumi.com is now THE place to be for people who want to listen to music AND connect with their favorite artists. It's fairly new, but the owners actually listen to their users and are extremely helpful and dedicated to making it a great experience for all.

[Kevin Dugan]

Ex - Thx for stopping by. Three things I've quickly learned since doing this post...

1) I'm new to the site and obviously joined AFTER the redesign. So consider that in my review.
2) I'm impressed by the passion of thesixtyone's community
3) The old design sounds impressive.

[umdesch4]

You know what saddens me the most? The fact that everyone reviewing the new site, and all the newcomers looking at it for the first time think it's so impressive...and if you hadn't seen the old site, it IS impressive.

Imagine how impressive a site like that with double the features, double the *options* for interactivity (not that you needed to use them), and close to zero bugs would be. THAT is what the old t61 experience was. If the old site had gotten the kind of attention the redesign is now getting, who knows how great it could have become?

I need to make one illustrative example from my personal experience. Bankai, an indie artist from Australia, is now flying to Vancouver, and will be playing shows across Canada (and the US now too) in the coming weeks. Almost entirely funded by individuals from the t61 community who love his music, connected with him, and sponsored him.

That's just one example. Over the few months I've spent on the site, as an artist and a listener, I've shared music-making tips with other artists, discovered hours upon hours of great music via other listeners, gotten constructive feedback on my own work from "fans", and even influenced other artists by making sure they knew what I liked about the particular songs I chose to buy from them.

I can't see how any of that can happen with the redesigned version of the site, and I feel it's a significant loss.