The Sixty One is a website that helps you “find your new favorite song in less than five minutes a day.”  The site enables its members to earn points for discovering successful songs early and recommending them to others. According to the site, they make tastemaking “fun, competitive, and trackable.” I recently interviewed Bryan C. Russett, a the Sixty One power user who introduced me to the site.

1. Who should check it out?
Music snobs primarily. Ah, anyone really. If you spend more than an hour each week looking for new music then it’s a great place to get involved.

2. When did you know the site was for you?
Probably the first time a song I found hit the homepage. And then finding out who the song, a cover, was written by, seeing she was on the site as well, and meeting her performing at a gig in Boston. Either then or the first time I clicked on something and it made noise. It really is a very smooth site.

3. Can you explain how bumping, points, rewards work on the site?
A “bump” is a vote of confidence for a song. Just like other sites with ranking systems (digg, reddit), songs that get a lot of votes have a better shot at hitting the homepage. The difference is that there’s an up-front cost to vote and a scoring system based on how early you get in on good songs. You end up listening to songs outside your comfort zone because it looks like a good investment… There’s also an auction every couple hours where people can bid on a chance to pick a song to put on the homepage.  You usually get a thank you from the artist for reviving a song of theirs. You get some street cred for reviving under-appreciated songs. “Adding” music means selecting it for your list of favorites, which you can arrange into playlists and people can listen to when they click on your Radio. Detailing all of the features of the site would take a little long but suffice to say that most everything is well integrated and easy to pick up on.

4. What do you personally “do” on the site?
I go to the site, check my profile to see who’s commented on my wall and if any artists I’m a fan of have uploaded new music. I’ll open the browser window in a new tab and click through the day’s new music (usually about 100 songs) and start clicking on songs I want to hear (you have to listen for a minute before you can bump). So far I’ve bumped around 1700 songs which puts me just under 20 a day I believe. It is an addictive site, no doubt about that – you really have to scour the day’s music to catch hit songs early. I guess you could just appreciate the music and not worry about scoring tons of points but what’s the fun in that? Once satisfied that I’m up on all the day’s activity I’ll usually say hi to some other listeners on the site and check out their radio.

5. What’s your favorite thing about the community on the site?
The accessibility, I’d say. The artists on the site are generally responsive and the listeners are by and large quite friendly. It is, however, a bit difficult to communicate. The site’s owners are experimenting with social features but there’s really very little you can do outside of listen to music and post on people’s walls. There are community forums but the owners silence any conversation that’s remotely critical of the site or questions changes (which is what people would naturally do on a growing, evolving website). An independent community site called Max Bumps was started that’s open to all thoughts but it’s mostly for diehard users. Despite the communication gripes, T61 is still the best option out there right now for discovering and enjoying new music.

Feel free to say hi: http://www.thesixtyone.com/egospring/ (and remember to uncheck the box that says “block messages from strangers” so I can say hi back)

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