Our Mission

thesixtyone makes music discovery a fun, adventurous experience with persistent reputation and rewards -- it's like a massively-multiplayer game for music junkies who are always on the prowl for new sounds. For everyone else, it's a spot where anybody can instantly start listening to good new music...a place that personifies people getting excited about music simply because they enjoy it.

Start Listening

Our homepage offers a few ways to explore the music that flows through thesixtyone:

• hot: Songs of the moment that are happening as we speak. It's a formula balancing bump count and post date.
• new: Up and coming songs ordered chronologically by post date.
• best: Top performers on thesixtyone since the past 30 days.
• the rack: Random mix of songs that haven't hit the homepage. Listening earns you free points which you can spend on bumping your favorite songs up the charts.

How does it work?

Musicians upload their music for listening, but rather than allowing the Simon Cowells of the world decide which songs go on the homepage, the listeners do. How, you say? If you like a song you've found on thesixtyone, just click the "bump" button to increase its bump count. Doing so will cost you points, but if songs you bump get bumped by others, you can earn more points! Collecting points increases your level and reflects your skill in picking top songs in your favorite genre!

By listening to songs through the lens of the collective community on thesixtyone, you'll always find good new music. We're committed to giving every bit of music on the web the opportunity to find its audience.

Highway 61 A road is a road, but sometimes it's more. Sometimes a road sings. Drive down Highway 61 and you'll find music everywhere you turn. Muddy Waters rode the 61. So did Bob Dylan, Ike Turner, and B.B. King. Elvis grew up in the housing projects along it. Highway 61 was the road by which people left to find better opportunities. And by leaving they took their music to the world. Come join us on thesixtyone.

Welcome to the Business of Fun

	James Miao James got his start in the game industry during high school, working his way to production and marketing jobs at Electronic Arts, Activision, and ATARI -- his favorite projects were Battlefield 2 and Demon Stone. He also hacked hardware during his teens, designing a shoebox-sized media computer built on a Linux kernel. James studied at USC's Interactive Media Division.
	Samuel Hsiung Sam loves three things: code, DoTA and free food. He previously co-founded WebShaka, the creators of YouOS (operating system in your browser) and ProjectWedding. He also did some machine learning work in digital music classification at DigitalMC during his school years. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the California Institute of Technology.

Press

"thesixtyone is the most interesting music website I've seen since last.fm."

-- Shane Richmond for The Telegraph

"thesixtyone is probably one of the most feature-rich, well thought-out music sites of its kind."

-- Lifehacker

"an interesting music discovery game that connects artists and fans."

-- Boing Boing

"massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) in that users collaboratively rate music by betting on it with points."

-- Eliot Van Buskirk for Wired

"listening to music on thesixtyone is a fun experience for people interested in hearing something new."

-- Mashable

"the use of an almost video game like format consistently keeps you interested."

-- The Drop

"thesixtyone is a really cool music discovery service that helps artists distribute their music."

-- Laughing Squid

"thesixtyone is the new way to find emerging music artists."

-- EPIC-FU

"Meet thesixtyone.com, a new, well, I am not sure what to call it other than cool."

-- Gadgetell

"This site is the definition of 'social music' and the potential for thesixtyone to go BIG is very real."

-- MassivePress