Free full-screen music discovery, on your screen or on your tablet
October 28, 2012 5:34 PM   Subscribe

We last discussed music discovery site TheSixtyOne back in 2009, but it's changed pretty radically since then. Out with pages of spare, Facebook-like charts, in with gorgeous full-screen imagery peppered with photos and information about each track and the artists behind them. Anybody can submit music to the site, where community listens and ratings elevate the best to the top, and users can directly tip their favorite musicians with purchasable credits. Explore by mood, by Creative Commons tracks, indulge in some gamification with quests (in the top bar), or follow development on the official blog areasixtyone. Returning soon: user-created listening rooms for dedicated playlists or topics. And if you own an iPad, don't miss the free companion app Aweditorium, which sprawls the site's entire collection into an endless grid of playable audiovisual fun.
posted by Rhaomi (15 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
I should note that the redesign was not without controversy.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:36 PM on October 28, 2012


Neat site so far but the login stuff seems to be broken. I tried to create an account and when I hit the create button it just hung there. I tried it again and it said that my email was already in use so it much have created the account but it just hangs when I try to log in. It says "pondering" but never returns.
posted by octothorpe at 5:56 PM on October 28, 2012


Does it actually work again, then?

The lack of action in the next tab along (fails to find the music I uploaded back before the redesign, fails to allow me to log in, fails either to allow me to reset my password or to tell me that it no longer recognises my email as an active account) would seem to indicate 'no'.

On the plus side, at least it isn't actually crashing my browser any more, so clearly they have made some improvements. And given that this post occurred, it is clearly at least working for some people. But not for me.

dreaming

introspecting

speculating

pondering


I wonder if the coders behind the site have ever pondered actually testing their code before deploying it.
posted by motty at 6:01 PM on October 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


I think they're in the midst of rolling out some new features (like rooms), so new user registration might be a bit hinky. I already had an account from before, so I didn't notice anything amiss.

The actual music playback, exploration, app, etc. all work fine though.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:07 PM on October 28, 2012


I quit using it a couple of months ago when it completely stopped working. Neat concept, brutal indifference to having an actual functioning site.
posted by winna at 6:08 PM on October 28, 2012


Visually, the site is jaw-droppingly beautiful, but yes, the functionality needs improvement.
posted by Cash4Lead at 6:09 PM on October 28, 2012


At first glance, this looks pretty cool.

I sure do hate this "gamification" thing, though. People in my office have been casually dropping the word into conversation about upcoming projects lately. I haven't started throwing things at them yet, but I think I'm going to make a point of it this week.
posted by brennen at 6:21 PM on October 28, 2012


I did manage to find about about Star Anna from the site, so it was worth the click. Annoying though that you can't find the artist home page or Wikipedia site from the artist's page.
posted by octothorpe at 6:38 PM on October 28, 2012


Gamification, n. Leaving the carcass of a game animal out too long.
posted by dhartung at 6:50 PM on October 28, 2012


"Gamification": I know something is in it's death knell when it percolates down to the level of the guys I work with, and they start talking about it like we need to know it. That can be translated into "we should have known this three years ago, see also: social gaming, social sharing, etc.).
posted by maxwelton at 9:56 PM on October 28, 2012


Yeah, the registration thing took numerous tries for me, and then it showed me as logged in. And then I tried to give something a heart and it asked me to log in again, even though I appeared to be logged in at the time.

Equally frustrating trying to select something from the menu: moving my cursor from username toward the menu caused the menu to disappear.

Couldn't upload an image from my computer as a background either. I tried several times with no luck.

It's too bad, because the site looks good, and i'm always interested in ways of hearing new music. However, the random brokenness and difficulty makes this a complete no-go for me. I'd rather just look up artists I like on Soundcloud and then see who's following them.
posted by dubold at 3:01 AM on October 29, 2012


dreaming

introspecting

speculating

pondering


It's not a bad idea, but yeah, this is all I was getting after mutiple attempts to join.
As I type this, it is suddenly showing me as logged in.
I'll attempt to upload a song but if it tells me it's debating again, I just may be leaving or deleting my account.
posted by chococat at 8:11 AM on October 29, 2012


Ubuntu 10.10 + Chrome 20 = no sound

edit: Firefox works
posted by Bonzai at 8:55 AM on October 29, 2012


Nice, but a bit too white & US biased. Would be more fun with other countries and races.
posted by signal at 6:19 PM on October 29, 2012


Tried again to authorize my account today so I can actually try to use the service but it just lays there and says pondering and thinking so yeah, I give up.
Sorry, this site kind of sucks.
posted by chococat at 8:26 AM on October 30, 2012


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