movementsixtyone.com

movementsixtyone.com was allowed to interview Uvumi’s founder Marshall Stokes, who provided very interesting and thorough responses.

M61 has been wanting to learn a little about Uvumi’s Marshall Stokes ever since former thesixtyone.com members began flooding Uvumi in late January. Stokes and his crack team of people have been hard at work, coping with the influx of traffic, but he found time out of his busy schedule to answer five questions  posed to him.

The questions were chosen to get a better idea of the past, present, and future of Uvumi and what influenced its creation. Stokes graciously took the time to write very thorough responses, and M61 thanks him. And with that, the “interview.”

1.) What role has music played in the course of your life?

When I was about 11 years old I got hooked on heavy metal and spent a lot of time listening to Iron Maiden, Megadeth, and Metallica. As a teenager I fell in love with classic rock and bluegrass music, and spent countless hours listening to Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty, Van Morrison, Pink Floyd, CCR, and other classics. When I was 13, I starting playing guitar in my spare time and learned my favorite Petty and Zeppelin songs by downloading tabletures from the budding internet. A couple years later, my closest friend in high school exposed me to underground hip hop, and I became infatuated with the beats and brilliance of Kool Keith, The Pharcyde, and of course the groundbreaking Beastie Boys, to name a few. When I got to college I suddenly had access to insane amounts of music I had never heard, via high-speed networks, and I explored a lot of electronic music, which I found to be great for studying.

Listening to music was life-changing, and was a critically important component of my youth, but what really gave me a solid appreciation for musicians and music in general was playing guitar and my experiences recording my own songs. I experimented with home recording as often as I could for about eight years, and when I finally realized the kind of skill and talent it takes to produce a quality recording, I developed a very deep appreciation for the amount of work and artistic ability that goes into great songs and great recordings.

(There are four more questions behind the cut. What are you waiting for?)
Four more questions behind the cut!

movementsixtyone artists, fans, industry, listeners, Marshall Stokes, movementsixtyone, music, musicians, MySpace, thesixtyone, uvumi, uvumi.com

Owner of Cherrypeel.com contacts M61; New users settling in at Uvumi.com; TheSixtyOne.com filters out user comments on Facebook page

Bo Claypool of Cherrypeel.com has opened contact with M61, looking for feedback on how Cherrypeel and sites like it can encourage “the return of music to an art form, rather than an industry.”

Cherrypeel.com was originally the brainchild of two college students in Toronto. Claypool bought the site last year.

“I have a passion for music and the Internet, and Cherrypeel is, in many ways, beyond just a hobby; it’s a way to help Austin musicians really showcase their music,” Claypool told the Austin Business Journal in September 2009.

Responding to Claypool’s inquiry, M61 said that maintaining a communal aspect to music was key.

“The community that detached from T61 did so primarily because the community aspect was ripped out of the format,” M61 said to Claypool. “From that large group of people, many listeners loved communicating with the artist and vice versa. When that was taken away, a lot of the ‘heart’ of the site was lost. At a close second was the lack of respect and communication that James and Sam showed to the community. By not communicating any changes and not including documentation on how to use the new design, they alienated their customer base further.”

“The community aspect of music will likely be key to capturing music as an art form,” M61 added.

An interview with Bo has been requested to get his take on Cherrypeel.com and what independent music means to him and his site. Stay tuned.

—–

As the first wave of thesixtyone.com refugees settles into Uvumi.com, new artists and listeners continue to show up there. Meanwhile, Marshall Stokes continues to respond to community requests and minor site load issues. In a comment on this site’s third blog post, Stokes reached out to a user from India that complained that he was “blocked” from accessing the site. It’s unknown if the issue has been resolved, but as the user indicated that he had to use a proxy to access the site, it’s possible the user’s ISP may be partially responsible.

Meanwhile, users are encouraged to give a little leeway to Stokes while he and his team addresses issues. As forum user PaulNZ explained: “The team at Uvumi have shown themselves to be open and responsive to ideas (but lets not swamp them too much right now, I imagine they are busy enough dealing with the sudden growth!)”

M61 is reaching out to Stokes for an interview about the site’s design and inspiration behind it. More news to come.

—–

In a move that alienated thesixtyone.com users (past and present) even further, owners James and Sam have filtered user comments out of the main stream of their T61 Facebook page and have defaulted all comments on user posts in the user stream to a hidden status. Additionally, they disabled the ability to make wall posts, even in the user stream.

The last accepted user comment was at 5:56 p.m. on January 26. Since then, users have been posting comments in that post listed as “Charlie Pattinson – How do I… CALM THE F— DOWN?!”.

“Wow… just wow. Instead of fixing problems, they’re attempting to stop us talking about it?” commented user Joel Rich.

“[H]ow is censoring your (rapidly decreasing in number) fans going to help your already crappy rep right now?!” asked user Tammy Tamkin.

It’s unknown whether T61 will ever open up commenting again on their fan page. However, it’s clear that the owners are attempting to perform some sort of damage control in the wake of their highly unpopular changes and avoidance tactics. Others have noted in the past that James and Sam have been unresponsive to most communication attempts and have ignored users in the past.

“It’s bad enough when you ignore your users — it’s even worse when you can’t take responsibility for it,” said forum user xyresic.

general news Bo Claypool, cherrypeel, cherrypeel.com, Facebook, m61, Marshall Stokes, movementsixtyone, music, t61, thesixtyone, uvumi, uvumi.com

Welcome all T61 refugees! The ship may be sinking (or is that stinking?) but we have plenty of space for you here.

On January 20, 2010, the owners of the site thesixtyone.com (T61), without any notice or support, implemented a new design that left long-time users stumped, frustrated, and angry. The removal of elements like the radio, public “walls” for users and artists, and common-sense navigation tools have caused many users to boycott the site. This has had the effect of scattering users across the internet to protest, get answers, or find solace.

While I may not have been the most active member of thesixtyone.com, I loved it very, very much. When I found out what was happening, I took the time to soak in what the site changes meant to the userbase. As it currently stands, the lack of social elements has fundamentally shifted how listeners and artists discover and interact with each other. Even if the T61 team eventually reimplements many of the features that were yanked, I can personally say that I lost all of my respect for them. I would be hard pressed to return, even if they simply dropped the whole redesign and stuck with old.thesixtyone.com. (This is nearly 100 percent unlikely.)

Anyway, I wanted to build a site that acts like a hub, bringing together all the information that’s out there and reuniting artists with listeners. (And vice versa) I don’t know how popular this will be. I may only get a couple of people interact here. But even if I can reunite one artist with one fan, I will feel like I at least did something.

As I type this, I have to stop and ponder if we’re being too melodramatic about all this. However, I have quickly come to the conclusion that we are not. A love of music, whether as a discoverer or a creator, brought thousands of people together. Music is something that should be shared. It enriches all of our lives. When a key form of that enrichment is greatly disturbed, we all are equally disturbed.

Anyway, I can’t make this first post too long. I still have a lot of work to do, coding up some HTML for the main site. But this blog and our new forum will hopefully do a lot of the footwork of uniting music lovers while we get the rest of the site going.

Please pass this site address to everyone who is a refugee of thesixtyone.com. And I hope that enough people utilize this to eventually refer to it as “M61.”

Yours,

lostraven / Shawn

movementsixtyone artists, listeners, m61, movementsixtyone, music, refugees, t61, thesixtyone