Finding New Music

Thanks to Chad, I've gotten myself addicted to yet another website.  It's called thesixtyone, and it turns the discovery of new music into a type of MMO.  The idea is that you log in and listen to songs streamed through the site.  When you come across one you like, you "bump" it, spending some of your points to nudge the song up in the popularity rankings.  If the song continues to get bumped up by other listeners/players, you earn points back.  The most popular songs wind up hitting the homepage.  You can also earn points by listening to "The Rack," which plays songs that haven't yet risen to the homepage.  There are also achievements, like you find on the Xbox 360, which you can earn.  The more points you earn, the higher a level you achieve and the more songs you can bump. At first, I wasn't sure about the site.  I logged in and messed around a bit, but I usually prefer to listen to my music through iTunes and have Last.fm track them.  But as I started finding neat bands and songs I really liked, I got more into it.  There's some really great music in there that I otherwise would never have heard.  Quite a bit of it is available for free download, too, and others you can purchase as DRM-free files from Amazon's MP3 store. I've been having a real blast with it, and I invite you to come out and join me.

[flash http://www.thesixtyone.com/site_media/swf/user_profile_embed.swf?usernam... p={wmode;transparent}]