What is it with me and music sites? First I became a disgruntled ex-emusic customer, and now I'm a refugee from thesixtyone.

How did thesixtyone fall from beginning to fulfill my music wishlist? Not long ago, James and Sam, the guys who run t61, announced that they finally understood the way forward for the site. Last week it launched, and apparently the relaunched site has had positive feedback from sites like TechCrunch. For those on the site, the people in my community, I think the biggest reaction was ... WHAT ... THE ... FUCK?

The biggest attraction of t61, for me at least, turned out to be the community. It was great to chat to people in my group, the Beat Geeks, engage with artists, and talk to other users. On the whole, that was how I found music that I liked. And that's exactly what I feel that the redesign took away.

This is what the Beat Geeks group page (or channel, as it's now called) looks like now.

The background image changes, depending on what music is playing. What used to be on that page was the top five songs the group was playing and the discussion that was going on between members. Can you see the group discussion? If you click on the tiny link 'discussion' in the box on the bottom right, the discussion turns up in the box. That little tiny box down there is all that's left of what was one of the most engaging things about t61.

There are other things that drive me mad about the new site. I find it terribly difficult to navigate, with all the links hidden away. The changing pictures are a distraction too; I'm here to listen to music and engage with people, not watch pseudo video clips. You can no longer browse around the site because going to a new page changes the music. And possibly worst of all from my straight user experience point of view, the new site insists on starting the music again after I've paused it. Finally, it doesn't even seem possible to leave a message on an artist's page any more. That's not a step towards bringing fans and artists together.

I don't feel angry at Sam and James, as I did with the dishonest money-grubbers at emusic, but I feel disappointed. I think they've made a mistake, that they've damaged the thing that made the site engaging and special in the first place. Of course, I may be wrong, and only time will tell, but a whole lot of people I know are abandoning the site, and feeling hurt.

Thankfully, a big bunch of those people have moved to a new place, somewhere that's equally community driven, and growing fast. You can now find me on uvumi. Once I find my way around, I'll probably do a write up. Let's hope my presence doesn't kill it.

A bunch of the (astoundingly awesome) electro freaks are based in Vancouver, where I was sinfully not playing shows.

Bankai kills Vancouver

What was the solution to this conundrum? It's the crowdsource age, so work out a budget and ask for donations. Well, not strictly donations, if you give money you become a shareholder and if there are profits, you profit proportionally to your stake.

I think this is so fantastic, and love the fact that thesixtyone has made it easier for Bankai to get something like this off the ground, because he's talking directly to people who love his music. This is the first time I've heard of anything like this. Does anyone know of other instances where fans have paid an artist directly to tour?

Go to the site and become a shareholder.

Now that I'm a disgruntled ex-eMusic customer, I've been playing around with other music sites. Via the enigmatic Bankai, I was introduced to thesixtyone, and it provides some of the things I dream of in a music economy. Most notably, artists actually get most of the money.

On thesixtyone, artists sell their music directly to their fans. Unlike a record or distribution deal where they only make $1-2 per album (if they ever get paid, that is), artists on thesixtyone make at least $7 per album and are paid every 30 days -- no wait for recoupment and no complex royalty schemes!

The site is attractive, relatively easy to use, under active development, and slightly buggy. They seem very responsive to bug reports, so I'm confident things will get better and better.

As individual artists rather than labels upload music, the music selection is nowhere near as wide as what was available at eMusic (I spits on the Sony deal). But I've still managed to find quite a bit of stuff to enjoy, my current favourite being thecitylights. You can "heart" music you enjoy, and if the song becomes popular (hearted by others) you get reputation. They've also got a clever "Quests" system, things like "listen to recently uploaded music", that earns you hearts and reputation. I'm finding it slightly addictive, though I'm not really sure what you do with reputation.

thesixtyone has a Flash music player, and lets you navigate around the site and the music keeps playing, which is great. Unfortunately, it does this by intercepting clicks, so that the URL doesn't reflect where you are in the site, so you can't bookmark things directly.

Music can be bought with a credit system. I haven't bought any yet, and I'm not sure what the pricing is, so we'll see how that compares to other sites when I do.

Overall, I'm hopeful thesixtyone will be meeting at least some of my music needs for a while to come. Go and sign up and play around, and tell them michaeltwofish sent you.