t61++: thesixtyone on awesome
Prerequisites: You need to be using Firefox and have the Greasemonkey addon to use this script.
A discussion on t61 one day led me to create a little script you can type in the address bar of the browser to toggle a sneaky little feature to toggle the site to auto repeat songs. After requests for that came every odd day and suggestions for a Greasemonkey script, I decided to create one. I started having fun playing around with t61 scripting so I created a little more than that. Hopefully you guys find it useful.
Update (July 27 2009): rd3k has now officially joined the t61++ team. We should be pumping out stuff twice as fast now 
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!! Grab the script here !!
FYI (Aug 11/09)– Please Read: We just got an email from james (one of the t61 creators). He doesn’t seem to like our awesome little script. I plan to leave it up and even edit it but just for “educational purposes only”.
This is a total bummer. We are the big fans of t61. We aren’t trying to cheat, we are so dedicated to t61 we are trying to get more out of it. I would suggest leaving him a friendly note if you disagree .
Here is his email:
…While I love the idea of users motivated to get extra functionality out of the site, the ToS is pretty clear that 3rd party scripts are prohibited. On the bright side, I’m glad you brought this to me as we’ll surely consider these ideas for the next feature push. We’ve got some pretty exciting stuff in the pipeline, so stay tuned.
Best,
James
This will be the page I update with changes.
Current Version (1.3):
New Awesome Interface (by rd3k!) Woo Woo! Left side thinger like feedback.
Auto-repeat: Yay! You can now listen to songs over and over. Press it to toggle auto-repeat on. Press it again to turn it off.
Auto-rack: Sometimes when I am listening to the rack it just stops and I have to go start it up again. Press it to toggle auto-rack on and it will check that the rack keeps going. Press it again to turn it off.
Auto-maxbump: Now that I am level 16 I hate clicking the button 16 times and having to wait a second or two in between.
Show remaining rep until next level (Thanks rd3k): Now the remaining rep until level shows up beside a user’s rep in their profile.
Auto-radiobump: Instead of having to click on the radio link so many times, I’m going to figure out a way to keep the RBs pumping while just listening to the radio.
Stuff in the pipe:
Auto-shortPlay (Requested by CordwainerBird) Play songs halfway then move the next (speed up quests)
If you have any questions/comments/suggestions/ranks on the ethics of Greasemonkey on t61, leave a comment below or hit me up on t61 (http://www.thesixtyone.com/mattymc/).
Streaming Music Communities: Hype Machine vs thesixtyone
In the past I have never been a big fan of streaming music online. MySpace was too disaggregated and while the Pandoras of the world used a cool technology, they didn’t give up enough control to hold your attention.
The first music site that came out that was actually useful was Last.fm. I still use it to keep a history of what I listen to but I stopped paying the three bucks a month for the radio station. It just didn’t cut it without the ability to say ‘I want to listen to this song’ not just songs like it!! Don’t worry though, the sites I am pitting against each other both let you scrobble your stuff.
Nowadays with music streaming communities like Hype Machine and thesixtyone at my disposal, streaming is a much better experience than anything iTunes can dish out.
Out of the these two I personally gravitate towards thesixtyone. Here’s why…
Hype Machine
The Hype Machine is basically just an aggregator of hand picked music blogs. It’s a great site for keeping up with new music.
It works well for the person who wants to be given a bunch of music to listen to. You don’t have much control on what type of music you listen to except on other people/blogs post. If that is your cup of tea — drink up.
Pros
- Music is aggregated from blogs so it keep up with “what’s hot”.
- Super simple. Search by popularity, newness, or search. Play it, put it on your list, subscribe to blogs/people to find more.
- Great options for making it easy to download/buy the song. It links up to eMusic, Amazon, and iTunes to name a few.
Cons
- 90% of the songs are remixes, so unless your a remix junkie you really need to sift through the stream.
- Passive community, you basically just listen to what the blogs are pushing and pull out what you like from the stream.
- No comments / Very litting rating options / no personal touch.
- Due to copyright issues, stuff gets taken down all the time.
thesixtyone
thesixtyone on the other hand is a total democratic community. The songs posted there need to be uploaded by the artist and for the artist to be allow to upload more, we the people need to “bump” them up in popularity. As you “bump” up songs/artists you gain reputation if your judgement turns out to be popular in the community. Reputation gives you more power to revive songs to the front page and stuff like that. This alleviates the casual listener from the listening to too much junk and rewards the hard working listeners/participators for becoming involved.
Seems a bit overwhelming but you get used to the rhythm of things. In short, it is. Once you are immersed and have your hearts and favorites set up it gets much easier to work with. It’s like working on a playlist for a long time — it’s worth the time. It’s also pretty addictive trying to bump up the music you like to the top and gain reputation doing it.
Pros
- Great filtering system — Sort by what’s hot, newly submitted, or most popular all filterable by both genre and your specific mood within that genre.
- Addictive community — artists have a page to communicate with fans and fans have an outlet for there music taste.
- Ability to tag your favorites to sort/listen your list when you are just listening
- After some time, you end up with a much better and easier to organize list of music to stream — which is the usually ultimate goal.
Cons
- Sometimes the community can hold you back. I hate when I don’t have any more hearts (daily votes) and I can’t even save a song to my play list. Grrrrrrrr.
- You need to play around with it a bit to really get into it
- They allow you to download music if the artist allows it but only links to Amazon to buy music (sucks for Canadians who can’t use Amazon). They have said they are working to integrate with more stores though.
Matty is a coder, techster, and music lover hailing from Vancouver, BC.
