TheSixtyOne is a free music website that a friend of mine introduced me to. It’s a great place to check out new music/artists. It’s similar to Pandora but seems to feature lesser known artists and has a type of game aspect added into the service. Here is what the people who operate the site say about their service:
thesixtyone makes music culture more democratic: artists upload their work for review, but, rather than allow a stuffy suit in a boardroom to decide what’s good, thousands of listeners do. The best music automagically bubbles up on our homepage where you can listen to the most popular songs for any genre. It’s a quick way to find new music for your iPod powered by pure excitement as opposed to some contrived marketing budget.
Think you’ve got a good ear? Aside from customizing your experience, creating an account allows you to earn reputation, level up your influence, and collect badges for discovering and recommending good music that others may enjoy. On thesixtyone, tastemaking becomes fun, competitive, and trackable.
We’re on a quest to help people fall in love with something new while giving deserving artists an efficient channel for finding their audiences.
One of the more interesting things to me was that they offer a Creative Commons section of music. This just means the artists who release their music under this license allow it to be downloaded for free and used in various capacities without needing their express written permission. Open-Source music, pretty cool!