I really disliked the redesign of thesixtyone. It was an interesting reconceptualization of what the website could be, but I still find it annoying to use in an actual browser.
Seeing Aweditorium, the direction they've taken makes all the more sense to me. The game elements in thesixtyone and the mini-map in Aweditorium trigger something really nostalgic in me. It will be interesting to watch these elements converge between the two services. I just wish I had the hardware to enjoy this.
The redesign was absolutely awful for artists and power users. Where there was once a thriving artist/listener community is now a giant generic band photo.
I'd like to see how many artists they lost after the redesign. There is a thriving Facebook group (about 230 active users) of ex-t61 users that are lamenting about the fact that there isn't another music site like the original t61.
I am actually curious as to how many users they lost in the redesign and if they have gotten them back.
I can't use the site anymore and even old.thesixtyone.com is gimped way more than the site was before the new update, I go on once every couple months to see if the site is improving but not much has changed since the big redesign and it is so hard to find music that I just gave up.
I think the volume of new music being uploaded has gone down drastically. Since all of the group and profile chat features have been removed, there is no way to tell anybody about something new.
If somebody built a site like the original t61, you would find yourself with several hundred dedicated artists immediately.
Sure, but the website could be better. Just went there on the 3g iPad to be presented with a mostly blank screen... took ages for anything to happen only to be presented with a high res photo. Looks plush, but checking back on Chrome I see that it was a 390kb image... that's a hell of a hit on an 3g connection. Tried it again and got a 850kb image.
Have we forgotten that 3g connections aren't wired broadband connections? All just for a page that links us to iTunes so that we can download an app. It looks lovely, but I thought the site was broken and only saw the first image because I put the iPad down whilst I checked on the PC... only by putting it down did I inadvertently wait long enough to load the background image.
Seeing Aweditorium, the direction they've taken makes all the more sense to me. The game elements in thesixtyone and the mini-map in Aweditorium trigger something really nostalgic in me. It will be interesting to watch these elements converge between the two services. I just wish I had the hardware to enjoy this.