thesixtyone.com

Click here to find out more!

Indie music portal TheSixtyOne launched a drastically redesigned website over the weekend. Loyal users were less than enthused, but something tells us they’ll get over it. Just take a look. The site is beautiful.

Out are the lists of songs, the blocks of text and the excessive number of buttons. In its place is a large centerpiece band photo with a few interactive buttons in the corners and pop-up song descriptions and relevant pictures overlaid on top. The ultra-simple design positions TheSixtyOne as the anti-MySpace. Both sites grew thanks to participation by unsigned and unknown bands looking to attract exposure.

Click here to find out more!While MySpace has tacked on an ever-growing list of features and overcomplicated layouts, TheSixtyOne strips out the junk and puts what’s important at the forefront — the song that’s currently playing. TheSixtyOne isn’t shy about distancing itself from MySpace. On its community etiquette page, the first bullet point under “please don’t” reads: ”Spam. There’s a great site for writing the same message over and over, ‘thanks for the add,’ and chain letters. It’s called MySpace.”– Mark Milian
I guess I’m one of the disgruntled users that they’re talking about in this post, but reading this article helped me to get over myself a little bit.  I didn’t lose anything important, and I’m still finding new music through the site.  The only difference is the dramatic change in how I’m listening to the music when I’ve got the page up- which from the picture you can see is all but modest.  The pictures the artists choose are sometimes terrible, and sometimes great- both of them affecting how I’m listening, which is great because if I’m feeling very visual-  I can just minimize.

Permalink: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/01/thesixtyone-myspace.html

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