Note: I set up an account at Stereo Fame and am testing it out to see what I think. Come on over and try it out
Seems that T61 got some investors and started working on a new Web 3.0 design. They stated on the blog that this design was revealed to some users who helped with the design (I believe this to be a complete fabrication or those users never used the old site). Whatever the case, with no notice, in one day the 61 was changed and the revolution (or possibly MASS EXODUS) began.
A redesign? How could that be so bad. I really don't know where to start. The concept of T61 was orginally simple. Artist upload music, listeners give hearts to the songs they like, songs with lots of hearts make it to the front page. As you can imagine it didnt' take many songs to start creating a clutter. SO TO61 (original 61) put a 24 hr limit on new songs. This meant there was always a churn for new stuff. As much as TO61 was a promotional nightmare, it was fantastic for listners with ADD. If you wanted new music it was easy to find highly rated music in genres you liked, but if you wanted to chill to music you liked all you had to do was load up your saved music library.
The biggest most underated area of TO61 was the communities. It was a great place for users to band together, share music they like and just talk. There were hundreds if not thousands of groups and some more active than others. What was interesting though was how artist used these areas to really interact and promote themselves
From a promotional device for big labels, TO61 had to be a hard sell. You basically have no control over the populous. People promote whatever they feel like, and most importantly you don't control their radio. It was too free. Artist had too much power in TO61. I suppose that is why so many aspiring artist liked TO61. It really is too bad that big labels didn't use TO61 as a talent pool. If it was successful on TO61 it would have to have some merit as well as real revenue potential.
There were some really ingenuous parts of TO61. I loved the fact people could offer their music for free. I loved (even more) that artist could sell their music directly. I have to admit I spent more money on records on TO61 than I have at any other music store in the past 2 years. I also really like the Tipping option. How often would you buy a song? Once. But how often would you give an artist a $1 just because they brought some joy to your day. I tipped some artist way more than I ever bought anything. I just feel there is something pure and free about giving someone something with out demanding something in return and that was a true sensation that I've never felt on any other website.
Finally, finally finally reminiscing just makes it harder... but I found so much great music on TO61 that I would have never found any place else. Some are big bands some are little. I Fight Dragons, My First Earth Quake, Ladies of Sport, Ronald Jenkees, Macintosh Braun, RAC, and sooooo many more. I found those bands because of the community. I didn't find them because some one force fed an ad to me.
THE NEW T61...
What's wrong... where to begin. When the site initially loaded for me I thought it was an ad. You know one of those full page ads that usually have a "Skip this ad" in the corner then takes you to the site. I looked forever for that link, to have a horrible realization run through my veins, "OH SHIT. This IS THE SITE!" All of a sudden some music started playing. I hadn't hit any button and it just started up! "How the hell do I turn this music off?" as I searched for the stop button. That's because there isn't one. Hidden right in the up right corner of the screen (you know that place where there is never anything of importance on the net) is the "||" or pause button as it is commonly known will stop the music. My favorite part of the buttons though are that they don't show up until you mouse over the screen. What kind of user interface is that? A bad one. Wait, I think I need to step back a second.
T61 now has a full screen layout. Great for those people with really really big monitors, screw you little monitored users, especially those with net books and 10" screens! How dare you use T61! The most prominent feature on the site is the gigantic background graphic. With each song, a new artist uploaded graphic loads the background. This is awesome if you care about the artist and not so awesome if you don't care.
The navigation (notably the most important part of the site) is in 3 place (*Wha whaaa whaaaat?*) That is correct 3 places. Controls for playing music, pausing music, saving to playlist and refreshing media is in the Right top corner of the screen. Additionally the top right corner is where all of the "searching" tools for finding music are as well. Basically TO61's hundreds of genre pages have been reduced to "Top, Hot, New, CC, Moods, and For You". Next are the Explore tabs which include "Open Mic? Search, Revives (Doesn't change back to the old design, I tried) and Channels. Oh yeah and Quests.
The second area of navigation is at the complete opposite side of the screen in the far left bottom of the screen. This area is where you can see your all unimportant rep and hearts as well as access your profile (by clicking your name).
The third area is the middle of the screen which when hovering will show you a forward and back button (great for blindly skipping to the next song (maybe it will be good? *fingers crossed)) and a back button for those songs you just witnessed and also a little bar that pops out with the artist and song name as well as the controls for "Hearting, Commenting, Sharing, and Downloading"
Okay that is pretty much everything.
Missing from T61
I can't find my listeners or friends. I don't know where they went. I would pretty regularly look at my listeners and see what was going on on their profile, however I don't think you can do that anymore.
Also Channels is misleading. You can't browse them once you have joined them (I guess) I was able to only see my group, which is not as active as the other groups. Basically you can't find anyone on the site now, or see what is going on.
To check out another very active group "Beat Geeks" I had to google the group then look at the url path then amend my channels path in order to see that group. Needless to say most users wouldn't be able to do that. What I found was a group in discussion about this travesty. It was really kind of sad as I almost felt the group was trapped under a table in their collapsed community, separated from the rest of the world. I was definitely looking at a conversation happening in the corner of T61.
I tried searching for some songs I had saved... gone. Only songs I tagged had survived. I tried looking for a user, someone active, someone who I could find and get some answers. Faberex was one. I looked and looked. Found the profile, but no conversation. Had everyone deserted this place? Had everyone abandoned T61? I hacked my way into a few more groups, and slowly I found the story. "Everyone is going to Uvumi.com" Amongst the comments of angst and the sorrow of a lost site there was a trail leading to a new site Uvumi.com.
Still shocked from the site myself I decided to check on the interwebs for some answers. Twitter was full of angst and more of the story. Lots of people pissed that the site they liked, had disappeared. One person actually said that since the redesign of T61 that the user base of Uvumi had doubled. That didn't surprise me. Loyalty does not exist on the Net. A few more tweets and links located some groups that had moved off T61 to open their discussion. http://www.movementsixtyone.com/ is a site dedicated to finding a T61 clone. They even claim to be "refugees".
Who knew that a group of users would feel so hurt by a redesign. I'm sure artists and users all feel cheated in this deal. The sad fact is that money and growth probably caused this problem. I'm sure some investors saw this thriving community and was like "Hey, this is working! We should Capitalize on this" Let's hirer some big shot super expensive web development firm who will really give the masses what they want!" Dump some money, pay for a few surveys (With people who don't use the site) Then after all the dust settles, launch TheSiXtYoNE.com (We'd add exclamation points to our domain if we could) The hippest thing since MYSPACE! Then this is what you get.
THE FUTURE . . .
Quests and hearts and reputation. Who cares with the new site. If I can't compare myself to other users why does it even matter? Achievements were a badge of honor. Now they are hidden. That was such a big part of the draw to TO61, now it seems completely out of place. If they plan on recapturing audience they'll have to bring back the community.
Browsing. Come on. You can't expect users to endure a horrible browsing experience. Like it or not, some people don't like Hip Hop or Classical. I can't even find genres any more.
Play lists. The orginal T61 was all lists. If I hit play on a song, I knew the entire list of songs beneath it would play. I could constantly skip through songs and read track names etc. If the song was a day old I could also see the popularity of the songs. That's gone now, and when listening to music I have no way of seeing what's coming up, if it is good. It is blind listening, and I'm not comfortable with that. I believe that is a huge hurdle for the new layout.
Everything is hidden. If I have to click for info, your site exhaust me. I'm not a lab rat clicking everything to see the "Discussion" or "Comments" I understand that my comments aren't as pretty as the photo an artist uploaded, but seriously, I'm the one using the site here. DO I LOOK LIKE A RAT?
"TO DO" If you click on the "Channels" Link at the top it will take you to your group. At the bottom you have the "About" "Discussion" and finally "Daily Listeners" if you click that all it says is "TO DO" I'm guessing it was left out and they still have "To Do" the building for it. Maybe you should have left it in development until everything is there.
My biggest problem of the new layout is it seems like such a closed system. Everything is hidden and hard to understand. If a user hit the old site, the first thing they would think is "WHOA THERE SO MUCH GOING ON!" If a user hits this site they'll be like "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? EXIT" People are drawn to crowds and social activity. This new site is a pretty museum with some art, some music and empty halls. The only enjoyable time I've had on the new site was discovering a series of songs uploaded by artists disappointed with the new layout. They had been seriously hearted which would mean they are popular. One song is called "FUCK THE NEW DESIGN" by Lynskey Another is "Ef the New T61" by Axisone . Both of the songs have been hearted alot, basically showing how popular they are. What is interesting is that users have been using these songs to communicate with other users. Just read the comments of either of the songs. Hillarious. There are more songs like these, and unfortunately that has been my best experience. Too bad I could never find the songs again without looking at the links I just posted.
CONCLUSION::::::::::::::
I think T61 has learned a lesson. If they haven't realized their grave mistake then they really do deserve to fail. I can't imagine any users listening to their music with a constant roll of images etc. The original Sixtyone.com was a site you hit play, then moved away. I bet T61 have seen their usage stats plummet. Gone are the days of 5,000 + Mosh Pit Achievements. Gone, gone, gone. So now we'll see if they bring it back, but I'd say "doubt-full"
Unless T61 reverts in the next month, I believe the ship will have sailed. Users forget, and right now, whoever comes in with a site that can do some of the bells and whistles t61 had will win. Also, even if T61 came back, all the users would be wary. "When will they change T61?" will be the question everyone asks. That innocence is gone. So who'd trust them in the future. Uvumi.com Last.Fm are the big winners, and that sucks. That sucks sooo bad because T61 was awesome.
Note: I set up an account at Stereo Fame and am testing it out to see what I think. Come on over and try it out
1 comment:
you can reach the old T61 at http://old.thesixtyone.com/
It looks like it is down, but you just need to accept the Certificate and allow connection to the site. Looks bad, but will get you back.
Post a Comment