The SixtyOne 2.0

[Mel]

I don't like sudden and unexpected change, but it seems The SixtyOne.com changed the layout and how things look on the pages. I was dismayed to find my custom playlists gone until I came to this AreaSixtyOne site and read the blog entry down on the bottom... they say they saved our playlists and will return them... hmmmm.

Still I don't like sudden changes when I have to look around for things like points, playlists, my top 3 songs, etc. form the comfortable places they were in when I first joined.

But then I have this problem on all of these web services like Yahoo, Google Reader, Facebook, MySpace, Last FM, etc.... I get real used to on how things look and work and I hate having to change. Why can't they let us have an option to keep things as is?

About the only new thing that I will probably like is having TheSixtyOne songs that I play scrobble back to LAST FM.

[Blaine Fergerstrom]

Oh my gosh, it's HORRIBLE what they've done with T61. Very sad. All my stuff is gone. All my points are gone. My lists, my artists, gone. Sad.

[Mel]

I don't think the points are like gone "poof".... they just can't be easily found. I think I saw mine for a moment somewhere but can't remember exactly where.

The Rack only shows the current song playing and not the familiar 3 songs on the side... I mean that was helpful because I could easily pass judgement on an upcoming song by just looking at its "cover graphic".... I mean singer songwriter artists have a certain look and rappers have another look and metal bands have another look. So you know what to easily skip without hearing a single note... and then just chance the ones that looked interesting on first glance.

OK I just found out that it remembers the last rack song you played and if you did not finish it, it plays from where you left off.

The current rack song playing does not have the close box to get the pop up window out of the way.

[scrivener]

You can see your points by floating your pointer over the bump arrow on any song. This is not an improvement!

You can also make the rack pop-up disappear by clicking the upper-left corner of the box, where the close button used to be and apparently still is. It's just invisible now.

Another MAJOR omission are the recent histories of people I subscribe to (I like to keep an eye on Stefanie and Kalei!), which also means you don't get the recently-uploaded updates from artists you've favorited. For those of us playing the game (and don't mistake me: I'm still in it for the music; I just happen also to enjoy the game aspect), it's nice to get a notification (delayed though it always was) that certain artists had new songs up.

Kalei lamented on Twitter last night the loss of the 0 to 10 browse, but I found that you can still browse this way. If you go to BROWSE --> RECENTLY UPLOADED --> 1-49, your URL looks like this:

http://www.thesixtyone.com/#/browse/recently_uploaded/1/49/all/

You can change the 1 and 49 in the URL to any numbers you want (well, I wouldn't try a decimal, negative number, or irrational number, but you know what I mean!) and browse away.

It bothers me some that the forum is gone; it was a good way to see what other T61ers were thinking about the frequent changes. I'm not one to hit the CONTACT link unless I'm having problems with a site, and I'm not exactly having PROBLEMS. I'm curious about what others are saying, and I'd like to hear what the site's managers have to say in response. Meanwhile, there's still this site and MaxBumps.net (EDIT: the MaxBumps forum seems to be down as of Saturday morning!) if you need to hear what people are saying.

I, too, miss the familiar three-song rack view.

So far, I mostly like the aesthetics of the new view (that song-player in the lower left really bugged me for some reason), but from a practical view, this new layout removes a lot of the community aspect of the site, and that was one of my favorite parts of it. I'm willing to give it a try, especially if we're getting our playlists back (a major source of listening entertainment for me for the past three months!), but I really, really, really hope we get that subscribed history stuff back!

[Walter]

I'm lost in this new world...and I don't like my surroundings. Help!

[Stefanie]

I've given myself some time to adjust to the new t61. Here's my take on it so far.

DISLIKES (in order by how much I dislike the change)

1) Can't bump from the radio - I'm not going crazy, right? There's no function to bump from the radio? This is my most major gripe. If I navigate away from the page where I first played the song, I can't bump the song unless I go back to it.

2) Radio Placement - I personally liked the player being in the lower left. Granted, if the width my browser window was skinny enough it would sometimes get in the way of content located at the bottom left, but I liked how it stayed in place even when you scrolled down. Now I have to scroll up everytime I want to do something with the radio.

3) Points display disappeared - Yes, this definitely is not an improvement.

4) Recent history is history - The first thing I did when I logged into thesixtyone was to check which of my favorited artists uploaded a new song. Those songs would be the first ones I bumped. I can't do that anymore :O(

5) The Rack - I also mourn the loss of the next 3 rack view. I also disliked how you couldn't close the Rack pop-up. Thanks scrivener for making the invisible button known.

6) Changing the your 3 songs - I can't seem to find where you can change the three songs that show up in your profile. I'm sure this is something they just overlooked.

7) When they have a flash ad up at the top the drop down menus are layered below it so they're covered up.

8) They removed the number of current listeners. This is not really major but I liked seeing how many people were online listening.


LIKES

1) Scrobbling to Last.FM - LOVE, this feature. For almost a month my Last.fm wasn't being updated because I was listening to music on thesixtyone exclusively. (Find me on last.fm: http://www.last.fm/user/st3fanie)

2) Artist's page layout - I like the new layout of the Artist pages.

3) Recently uploaded - I like the "1-49", "50-149", etc. tabs. Good to know that you can just change the numbers in the url if you want a different range. The songs I always listened to first were songs that had 25+ bumps.

3) It's now listed if you can buy or download a song when you're browsing. Previously when you browsed you had to go the artist's page to see if the song was downloadable.


OTHER OBSERVATIONS (changes I noticed but I don't really have an opinion about)

1) The voice that says "Max bumped" is gone. I'm guessing this would be the same for the "First blood". I haven't first bumped anything lately so I don't really know.

2) Artist levels/points are gone.

[scrivener]

You can still change your three songs: You have to go to your FAVORITED list. You'll see FEATURE in each song's listing, right by the DOWNLOAD or BUY or FAVORITE. Just click FEATURE and you'll move the song to top of your three songs....whatever was on the bottom will drop off.

I like the look of the artists pages, but I liked seeing the artist's points and levels. But yeah, it's not critical.

[Mel]

Just discovered a couple of things.

1. If you hover or hold your mouse over the artist you are playing in the player bar on the top left hand corner, a drop down menu shows the last 10 songs you played. And there is an option to see what you favorited last.

2. I never noticed this before, but if you go to the comments and click the SHARE option you can click on the FACEBOOK, TWITTER or some other online option and have the song you are listening to posted to that website. A new window pops to TWITTER (using that example) and a Twitter post is made on your approval that looks like this:

"listening to Melissa Li: Rubik's Cube (http://tinyurl.com/5zkt25)."

[scrivener]

Stefanie said:

1) Can't bump from the radio - I'm not going crazy, right? There's no function to bump from the radio? This is my most major gripe. If I navigate away from the page where I first played the song, I can't bump the song unless I go back to it.

You can now bump songs from the song-player. This means you can be looking at other pages while your song-player is running and bump songs without having to go back to anything. Hopefully, some of the other functionality will be returning soon!

[scrivener]

In my first post, I said you could make the rack pop-up disappear by clicking in the upper-left corner. I meant the upper-right. I assume you all knew that because that's where it was before, but I'm correcting myself for the record. :(

[scrivener]

It's been pointed out on the MaxBumps forum that if you float your pointer over the SixtyOne logo in the upper-right corner, you get the number of listeners online, so apparently that hasn't disappeared, 'though as someone says there, getting the mosh pit badge seems more unlikely than ever. Normally at around this time (just before seven in the morning), there are 3500 (or so) members listening. Right now there are 2425.

SixtyOne artist The Upstairs Room (usually a profitable early bump, by the way) weighs in on the changes here. An interesting thing I never thought of that the artist brings up is that since the default page is the Just for You page, the homepage is less likely to be seen (true! I never check it out anymore!) and therefore getting a song there is not nearly as meaningful.

[Kalei]

I'm not liking the new site either. I gave it a few days and I'm still frustrated. There are so many things that I don't like about it - yet I continue to go back every day.

I'm really upset about the playlists - I spent so much time building them. I hope they come back soon.

I also don't like not seeing my score at the top. Hovering to see it just isn't the same. And I don't like not seeing others' scores too. Takes out the "competition" aspect for me. I miss the tuneboxes and I miss other people's updates. *sigh*

But I like the music so I guess I'll stick around.

Here's a link for new songs that are uploaded 0-10: http://www.thesixtyone.com/browse/recently_uploaded/0/10/min/1/
(Thanks, @Scrivener! :) )

[Kalei]

If anyone is interested.... a lot of people from T61 moved over to Plurk (yeah, I know - you hate Plurk). But they've started using it for tuneboxes and posting new uploads, tips, etc...

Here's who I follow:

arcturius

BabbleGrabble

batface89

canukgal

CirceRhode

clancy490

davyhamburgers

deSalire

Distilled1

Entchen25

huliwuxian

jeanburrasca81

karlski

kevincobarno

majl

mmathman_mr_t

MRamz007

Neez

Netters

pablotee

philomath

RaineL

RyanCoke

Sacagawea

SallySilvera

SandJSUCKALOT

sartan

skellytor

squeakyfingers

th0ughtcr1mes

ThomasAD3

todash

Wintermute