Music Site Thesixtyone Gets A Redesign, Many Users Upset
January 23rd, 2010
The site, which allows users to discover new music in a Digg-like fashion, unveiled it’s new site design a few days ago.
The redesign is a drastic change from the old site design and many of the old sites popular features have been taken away, atleast for now.
The new design features a full-screen photograph of the artists being played as each song plays along with info on that artist.
Some of the sites most loyal visitors or atleast frequent visitors are upset about the redesign and are taking to the sites Facebook page to complain.
The sites founders are defending the new design stating that the same thing always happens when there’s a change to the site.
I have used the site in the past several times and although many of the old sites functionalities have been stripped away I think they will slowly return.
The site is community driven and as time goes on and new features are added and old features improved the community will once again be at peace.
New Design:
Old Design:
Related posts:
The new features may slowly return but many users will not. People are VERY upset and feel used and ignored. The developers have always seemed inaccessible, aloof and arrogant, but this time I think they’ve jumped the shark with their old artist and listener community. It appears to some (many?) as if the social/community features that were dear to them represented “groupthink” in the minds of Sam and James and that the new design is more a product of excluding these evil features than it is a destination, except maybe for the glittery/shiny stuff that seems to captivate the psuedo-wunderkinds. The initial emotion of loss and grief at the sudden, unexpected loss of a very comfortable place is now being replaced by anger and resentment. Add the motivation of external venture capital funding recently leaked and the user community can connect the dots. I won’t come back without A) immediate restoration of old functionality and B) an apology. I don’t expect either.
Jerry is right. I loved thesixtyone, but i can’t stand the new site design. where are all my features? why can’t i easily get to lists of songs anymore? this really feels like the designers decided that they know what is best for the community, and they never even consulted us. it makes us feel like we’re not important, and many of us will not come back… not sure where we’re gonna go, maybe we’ll spend time on various other sites, i mean there’s always some myspace for discovering new music, and last.fm is ok, and recently i have been enjoying http://uvumi.com because it has a music player like t61’s that lets you listen while you browse to different pages without ever skipping or interrupting, but the community is not as big. what do to?
I think their biggest mistake was not releasing it to a few users to test out the design first. In the meantime you can still use the old site by going to http://old.thesixtyone.com/.
James and Sam were always aloof and inaccessible but people still felt like they were still “on our side” and trying to help indie musicians. This redesign is different, people feel deeply used and betrayed…
It’s not that they sold out, that was bound to happen eventually. It’s the WAY they are doing it (not communicating, taking a big, stinky crap all over the fans and indie musicians who helped make their site a success).
A lot of users have been joining a great Music Discovery and Community website, http://Uvumi.com . I have found the developers of Uvumi to be wonderfully welcoming and quickly responsive, a far cry from the experience at the aforementioned website.
Hope you will come along to http://Uvumi.com and find out more for yourself!