Mon 5 May, 2008
Lately I’ve been sort of inundating myself with music I’ve never heard, from artists I’ve never heard of. Recently I found out about a site called TheSixtyone (hat tip: Ontological Zombie on Newsvine), a site that allows artists to upload their own music for users to “bump” as it were.
Immediately I liked the look and feel of the site; easy to navigate and not too busy. You might think that you’ll only find the most obscure of underground groups, but after tinkering with the site for only an hour or so, I found new music from Arctic Monkeys and Death Cab for Cutie neither of which are indistinct.
All you have to do is click the play button on any given song, and you get to stream the music on TheSixtyone to your heart’s content. If you want to “bump” or vote something up, you’ll have to register. Registration is not without its perks. Users are rewarded with influence points and experience levels for their skill and expertise bumping good music on TheSixtyone. When you level up, you gain access to locked features such as multiple bumps.
Points give you more bumping power and are earned in several ways:
- Listening to music in “The Rack.”
- Daily log in
- Inviting people to TheSixtyone
“The Rack” is a cool feature which displays music that hasn’t made it into TheSixtyone radio rotation. You can earn up to 20 points for listening to the songs in "The Rack" and additional points for being and early bumper.
So far, I really like TheSixtyone which is still in the beta testing phase. The only things that could make it better is to make the site more social and for a some more artists from a wider range of genres to submit songs. Currently there are no songs from hip-hop, reggae or folk artists, mostly just indie rock and pop.
At any rate, I’m recommending TheSixtyone for your music discovering adventures!
