thesixtyone

I stumbled on thesixtyone today.

Indie music?

I’m not usually a fan of indie music.. that’s ‘independent’ music or music by independent artists who aren’t backed by major labels.. I normally tend to stick to the big names and usually lean heavily towards rock music.. Lately, however, I’ve been starting to get bored with the 3000+ tracks I have on my ipod and so I started exploring.. and that’s how I came across thesixtyone.

digg for songs

thesixtyone is a digg-like website for music.. You can sign up as a listener or an artist.. As a listener, you can listen to a whole bunch of indie music from different genre for free.. and of course, as an artist you can upload your own music.. But you see, the problem with this is is that a lot of the independent music turns out to be crap and it can be really hard to sift through the junk to find the good stuff.. that’s where the digg like voting comes in.. the listeners basically vote up their favorite tracks (its called ‘bumping’ here) and the most popular tracks appear on the first page.. The result? You get to listen to the music that’s been truly vetted by the community.. I tried it out, and trust me when I tell you that some of the stuff over there is even better than today’s chart toppers!

points

Well, sounds good so far, doesn’t it? Except one little problem… gaming. Gaming is when an artist gets some of his friends to repeatedly bump his song up (even though it may sound like crap) so that he gets on the front page. To get around this, thesixtyone has a nifty points system. You start off with 90 points (i think) and you get points for logging in everyday or listening to new music. Every time you bump up a song, you ‘pay’ 5 points. Not only does this reduce gaming, it makes you think twice before you bump up a song.. So, only the really good tracks get a large number of bumps To make things more interesting, you get additional points if you bump a song that eventually makes it to the homepage (aka becomes popular). And the more points you have, the more ‘reputation’ you have in the thesixtyone community.. kinda like a social network.

what about the artists?

Well, I haven’t tried signing up as an artist (yet).. but I think thesixtyone has some sort of payment system for artists.. where users download a song for a fee and the money goes to the artist.. I’m not too sure about this part, so check out the website.

UI?

The UI is another big plus for thesixtyone. Very nicely done. Click on any song and it starts playing in a mini player on the top right corner of the screen. And the best part is that you can continue navigating through the site and the music keeps playing! You can play one of the homepage playlists (hot/new/week) or make your own.. and of course you can share your likes/dislikes/playlists/rants/etc with your friends (aka a social network).

Great site.. I checked out a number of sites before I landed up on this one and I think I’m gonna stay (at least for a while).. Do check it out – http://www.thesixtyone.com.

‘Hot’ – ology!

Haha… This one’s hilarious! Finally we have one good article that takes aim at the crappy lyrics we find in most songs these days… Check out this sarcastic commentary about America’s No.1 song today…

Hot Hot Heat

The best part about this article is how they ‘analyze’ the lines of the song with flowcharts and venn diagrams n all… Good stuff!

Here are some interesting lines from this ’song’…

I’m hot coz I’m fly/You ain’t coz u not!

and check this one out…

I could sell a mil sayin nothin on a track!

I haven’t heard this song yet, but I sure know how its gonna sound Haha… How do people listen to this kind of stuff?!

Prashant.

twist in the story…

Wow.. Just when you thought the story was wrapping up with a happy ending.. the prison break guys have done it again!

I just finished watching the last episode of Season 2… and I’m hungry for more. I don’t know who the story writer for Prison Break is, but I know that he’s one helluva writer For those who haven’t seen the episode yet, I suggest you go n watch it ASAP… and for those who don’t know what I’m talking about… well… wake up!

Prison break has done a brilliant job of keeping the excitement alive for 44 freakin episodes… And they have a brilliant way of mixing in suspense with the story line… There’s always some question or the other that keeps nagging you as soon as you watch each episode! And the smart thing is that, even though its all just one story, they keep changing focus every few episodes… and that keeps you from getting bored… The timing is perfect too! Just as you get a vague feeling that you might get bored, they pop in these totally unexpected twists!

And of course the acting is awesome. Coupled with good camera work and smooth screenplay, the production is just kick ass.

This time around, it seemed like they were wrapping up the entire series… all the bad guys were dead/in jail, the good guys were free and it looked like a fairy tale ending. And boom! I’m suddenly in a different world… from out of nowhere, they bring in a secret military research center and…. oh wait, don’t let me spoil it for you. Go watch it!