areasixtyone

fyi

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:48:50 -0700

we moved to a new blog.

http://thesixtyone.posterous.com/

new miniplayer controls

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:53:00 -0700

the upgrade includes buttons for repeating a song and toggling veg mode. keep your eyes peeled for some new stuff w/ veg mode in the next 24 hours. have fun!

veg mode

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 19:26:00 -0700

we just pushed a very early implementation of visualizations on thesixtyone. for now, there’s only one visualization available (thanks to 9elements) and it’ll kick in after 30 seconds of mouse inactivity. use our keyboard shortcuts to control playback (see below) or click anywhere on the screen to close the visualization. to conserve cpu power, this feature only works when you have thesixtyone as your active browser tab. much more to come…enjoy!

p.s. try moving your mouse around the bubbles. :)

keyboard shortcuts

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:28:34 -0700

your keyboard finally gets some thesixtyone action. let’s hope mr. mouse doesn’t get jealous.

organizable playlists

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:21:00 -0700

are coming back in rare form! sam and i have been dreaming up some crazy awesome features (shhhhh!), but — before the madness breaks out — we figured august would be a great time to introduce a revamped playlist system.

extremely practical. possibly addicting. see you soon!

daily heart cap

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:19:47 -0700

just discovered a bug that broke the daily heart cap (you shouldn’t be able to go over your allotment). fixing it right now.

to clarify, we have NOT changed anything…we’ve simply taken the heart-based rep/voting system out of beta and rolled it out to all users.

thanks to everyone to wrote in about the bug! have a wonderful weekend!

beta no more

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:25:00 -0700

the new reputation/voting system is now out of beta. we’ve been closely monitoring usage/feedback and have a couple ideas for improvement, so stay tuned.

PayPal support has arrived

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:15:06 -0700

You can now select PayPal as a payment option on thesixtyone! You’ll need to visit your settings and select PayPal as your default credit option.

thesixtyone | bazaar

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

thesixtyone’s guiding principle is to enable the creative middle class, providing talented artists the opportunity to make a living making music. Today, we’re excited to introduce an online marketplace for supporting your favorite music on thesixtyone.

On thesixtyone, artists sell their music directly to their fans. Unlike a record or distribution deal where they only make $1-2 per album (if they ever get paid, that is), artists on thesixtyone make at least $7 per album and are paid every 30 days — no wait for recoupment and no complex royalty schemes!

Songs or albums can be purchased via the ‘download’ link. The bazaar’s open for all artists. To learn more, click here.

firefox users, notice anything different?

Sat, 16 May 2009 04:49:33 -0700

trying scrolling around. something just got a lot smoother. :-)

psych? and one more thing

Tue, 12 May 2009 18:27:00 -0700

hey guys, the “hearting/saving” changes have been rougher around the edges than we’d like, so they’ve been rolled back as we reevaluate some design choices. thanks again for your patience!

p.s. you may notice that the “history” tab in the miniplayer is now fully-persistent…no more losing your play history when you leave thesixtyone!

back/forward controls

Tue, 12 May 2009 03:36:00 -0700

it’s long bothered us that non-firefox users (chrome, safari, opera, ie) couldn’t use their browser’s back/forward buttons while on thesixtyone. well, i’d like to recitify the issue: we’ve added a nifty set of controls that appears when you mouseover the top left corner of your screen. enjoy!

quick update

Mon, 11 May 2009 14:59:00 -0700

sam and i have been very busy squashing bugs (thanks to our loving users!) and experimenting with some interesting concepts behind the scenes…so much so that we accidentally made one of the concepts (unifying favoriting/hearting) public before it was fully baked. eek!

the basic idea here is to consolidate the “verbs” on thesixtyone (saving/hearting) and simplify the user experience. additionally, we’d also like to see if we can reinforce the significance of “hearting” by encouraging listeners to only heart songs that they genuinely enjoy. we’re still experimenting and rounding out the rough edges (i.e. *persistent* play history is returning), so expect upgrades to the “favorited songs” and “stats and achievements” tabs in the near future.

as always, sam and i appreciate your patience (and awesome feedback!).

reinventing the brand

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:01:00 -0700

it’s pretty simple. we’re tired of people forgetting our name, so we’ve chosen a new one: thesixtynine. it’s catchy, screams “7 deadly sins” (hello max levchin), and, face it, it’s way more memorable than the lowly, often-overlooked “61.” who the heck is bob dylan, anyway?

more importantly, the switch has put us at the top of the heap as far as search engines are concerned. chief technical officer sam hsiung says “since rebranding to thesixtynine, we’ve seen a 234% jump in referral traffic. i’ve poured months into SEO (search engine optimization) tweaks with minimal results. i guess marketing trumps engineering.”

so remember, we’re not just a number anymore.

we’re thesixtynine.

screenshot by brian mcculloh

zomg reputation

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

by now some listeners have likely experienced a huge reputation boost on login, leaving them wondering: is this a bug? a wonderful dream?

“pinch me,” they say.

the recent jump was the result of completing our transition to the new heart-based reputation system. as such, reward structures have been updated accordingly.

so it’s not a bug, just the feature. er, “future.” :-)

shuffle shuffle

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:38:00 -0800

tonight we finally introduced a way for people to shuffle their music. listeners should now see a new sort tab appear under “favorited songs” — this functionality extends from your recently favorited tracks all the way down to your specific tag lists. enjoy!

tag radio

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:43:00 -0800

we’ve added a really sweet tag radio to the homepage! it makes for the perfect background music to fit your mood.

a preview of what's to come

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

as aluded to in a previous post, sam and i have been experimenting with an improved voting/reputation system over the past few months. early results have been promising, so we’ve decided to gradually open it up to the rest of the community so we can hear what you guys think and continue to add polish. more details to come on sunday…

james

creative commons

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:19:00 -0800

starting today, artists can select a CC license by clicking the “edit” link under an individual track. we’ve also added a creative commons-specific tab to the homepage! to learn more about creative commons, please visit http://creativecommons.org.

500 characters & invalid tags

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:22:00 -0800

we’re experimenting with a new 500 character limit on comment walls (doubled up from 250). as many of you can imagine, we’re still working towards an optimal balance of free communcation and spam prevention, so thanks again for everyone’s patience!

since the introduction of the tagging system, a small minority of listeners may have noticed that some of their playlists didn’t carry over from the restoration and that certain profile pages have become temporarily unviewable. the 2 symptoms ultimately tie back to the use of “invalid” characters that worked fine back when we had an explicit playlist system but not so much in a “tag” environment. we understand that this means longtime users with large existing playlist collections now face the inanity of re-classifying their tags, so sam and i have been brainstorming solutions for easing the transition.

thanks again for your valuable feedback!