Welcome to movementsixtyone.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