paulbailey.us (beta)

Sam and James,

I applaud you for trying to innovate but I think you should really step back from this a bit. Your changes have removed many of the best features of thesixtyone.com and now make music discovery a very tedious task.

The features I miss most are:

1. social networking- t61 made it easy and possible for me to find and interact with enthusiastic and adventurous listeners who were interested in my music (independent, DIY, art music)
2. genres- your intention of swapping genres with an “adventure meter” with is very subjective. I have no interest in browsing mainstream pop music so wouldn’t that be adventurous for me?
3. the UI- the old lists (recently submitted, most active, genre) made it easy to find music that was interesting in a short period of time. When I suggested the site to friends who were initially put-off by all the pop music, I always explained that they needed to search for at least 5 minutes to get the hang of it. Right now your setup is more like Pandora which is like searching through the dirt for a few small gems.

The best thing about T61 is that you had found a very engaging way (maybe inadvertently) to connect artists/bands directly to their listeners which created small communities based on genres/micro-genres. Your kudos system of hearts and quests is a great way to encourage a wide variety of “adventurous” listening experiences and I encourage you to focus new development on that area. What is so amazing about how you had T61 setup is that it could help any artist find their audience.  This in effect gave listeners (myself included) a very strong incentive to find value in music again and put my money behind what I was listening to.

I wholeheartedly (and many others on your facebook page) encourage you to rethink the redesign.

Sincerely Yours,

Paul

Paul Bailey
Composer/Musician/Educator
Los Angeles, Ca

UPDATE January 25, 2010-

it looks like thesixtyone.com as we knew it is gone for good. at this point a few other sites have popped up that are covering the bigger picture of the whole demise:

the rise and fall of t61 (via dreaming of butterflies)

http://www.iusedtolikethesixtyone.com/

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