blog dot cameronbanga dot com

I recently saw the upcoming internet music site thesixtyone.com on Digg and decided to check the web start-up out.



If you havent checked it out yourself, thesixtyone.com is a self proclaimed "music adventure" where users have the chance to listen to a variety of music streaming over the internet in a flash browser. The main draw of thesixtyone is a points system where users can level up by listening to new music, inviting new users to the site, and by just logging in daily.

The site encourages you to then spend your points on "bumping" songs. If a song is new or not too popular, it costs more points to give it a bump. As songs work their way up the charts, it gets sent to the hot tab where users can find soon-to-be hits in a multitude of genres.

The site also offers random tracks at the section it calls "The Rack." Here, you are given a play button with some album art where you are encouraged just to hit play. After you play the song, you can learn how many bumps the song has and then download it in many situations. You can also add the song to your profile.



Personal profiles play an important role at thesixtyone.com. Here you can add a picture, choose a couple profile songs, or receive wall posts from your friends. The profile is set up really well, but really could use some more room for personal information so that my profile would feel a little more unique.



To listen to music on the site, a flash player is used on the top of the page. It is a simple player which shows album art, song title and artist, and volume, but this player works extraordinarily well. The music is really good quality for streaming music with no load time. The coolest feature of the little player is it's ability to keep playing songs when you surf around the website, which is a welcome addition for a site which is looking to revamp how you look at social networking.



Another little cool feature for Firefox users is the fact that if you have thesixtyone.com open in another tab, the song which is currently playing will show on the tab keeping you straight on which band and song are playing as you browse.



This all being said, thesixtyone.com still has a long way to go if it wants change the way people look at the attractive combo of free music and social networking. Here are the top five things I see the site needing to fix before it hits the big time.

1. Integration with Facebook/MySpace - The guys over at thesixtyone.com have a great website going on right now. The music player is simple and sounds amazing, which is really important for a music site but something that most other sites find ways to mess up. However, I don't see the site beating out these two networking giants in the near future. We need to see the site integrated into Facebook or MySpace apps and definitely into Google's Open Social to help spread the word about this community.

2. Music organization - The organization on the site isn't bad, but it definitely could see improvement. I see that I can choose genre or if music is hot or not, but where are my alphabetical listings? Can I see what is hot this week compared to this month? I want to be able to just sit and chart tons of different stats to see just what is being listened to. I would also like to see a longer list of genres or maybe some sub-genres. This will give me a way to find artists in my favorite genres, like skate punk or instrumental jazz.

3. Suggestions based off my musical tastes - Thesixtyone.com claims that it is a musical adventure, but it throws users onto the island without a map. Pandora is popular online because it takes bands you like and finds new music you will enjoy based on your tastes. I love my friend Cody Jones because he has similar musical tastes and knows what I like, giving me a long list of bands I would like without me having to do much searching. People don't want to listen to a hundred songs to find one they like. Wouldn't it be sweet if I could export my iTunes library, upload that file to thesixtyone, and then get recommended tracks based on the bands in my library and how many times I listen to certain tracks? Work to integrate that and I will be sold for life.

4. Integrate iTunes, the Zune Marketplace, and other music stores - I really like the ability to click a link and purchase tracks off of Amazon. It really makes it easy to legitimately purchase music I enjoy, but I don't want to use Amazon. From your site, it appears that you receive a small chunk of change for each song you sell. Do everyone a favor and put up links for other popular online music stores. You may see yourselves losing out on some purchases, but the increased traffic and user satisfaction will be well worth it.

5. Add podcasting - I know that thesixtyone is a music site, but the flash player and bump idea are really fresh. The site is really easy for artists to use and add content too, so why not podcasters? You could add tons of great spoken content for free and just add a huge wealth of audio content. Sure it isn't music, but I would love to have a podcast on the site and work for bumps. It would also draw a whole new crowd to the site and add a huge amount of visitors.

All in all, thesixtyone.com is a great music site and definitely worth a look if you are into music in the least bit. The social aspect works real well and with some minor adjustments, this site could really take off in the next couple of months. I will definitely be keeping my eyes on it for a while to come.

This page is brought to you by...
If you love wikis, the internet has tons of informative wikis. Need to create a video game wiki? These simple programs are an easy way to keep people interested in your site. Not to mention a wiki can be about anything you want so download one now!