PIXEL MAVERICK

I love music.

I love beautiful web design.

I love discovering something great while it is still relatively unknown to most of the world — still obscure, hungry and pure.

It is because of these three great loves that I find the indie music site TheSixtyOne so amazing.  I originally heard about TheSixtyOne from a TechCrunch article and was blown away.

Here is a quick review of some of the best features of this site.

The Interface - The interface is beautiful in it’s simplicity.  The band has the ability to upload a picture that best represents them while their song is playing and that pic spreads the entire span of the browser.

Band Info - The information about the band appears in small partially transparent overlays that pop up throughout the song.  If you want to know the full info on the band you can click it, if you don’t you still learn some factoids about the band without interfering with the primary experience.

The Navigation - The navigation is minimal to keep from intruding on the main experience, but simple and intuitive so the user figures out how things work within a few seconds of interaction with the interface.  The “Info” overlays are clickable, and you explore bands by using the large Prev/Next arrows on the sides of the browser.  The main navigation is unobtrusive at the top right & the Action tools (Share, Fav, Download) are accessible from the toolkit lockup on the left side of the browser.

Additional Band Content - In addition to being able to write band info that appears in the previously mentioned overlays, the bands are able to upload additional content (Images, etc) that appear occasionally much like the info overlays.

The Variety - TheSixtyOne features bands that span all areas of music from SoCal to Folk.

“Wattup …braaaahhhhh?”

“Sometimes we just play concerts alone in the woods for the trees”

“One of these Sons of William is not like the others”

If you want more content and connection from TheSixtyOne you can also check out their Facebook Page or their blog, although from the dates on the posts for both of those it does not seem like they are very active.

TheSixtyOne is not a replacement for iTunes or Pandora.  You need those music options for on demand & preferred channel listening, but TheSixtyOne is definitely a beautiful vacation from those options when you want to find something new.

Hopefully the owners of TheSixtyOne will keep to their core offering and we never see them sellout and veer from that simple brilliance by adding stupid content like the crap that MTV spews these days.

I hope this review is helpful to any music lovers, and that more people and enjoy TheSixtyOne as much as I do.

A composer named Eric Whitacre came up with the idea to lead a virtual choir of singers.  Each one singing their respective voice (soprano, tenor, etc) part and splicing them all together into the following amazing video.

Wow!

Wow again.

If you are like me, after seeing something this amazing you want to know “how”.  A simple Google search later and I found that the composer (Eric Whitacre) wrote a blog post about how he put together this virtual choir.  Check it out.

Brilliant.  Inspiring.  Cool.

….Beautiful.

If you grew up on MTV music videos like me (…they actually used to play music videos on MTV btw), then you will love the Palladia.  I am not crazy about ALL of their programming, but the concerts and MTV Unplugged series that they show are amazing …great footage, 10801 high def.  I watched The Killers and Muse concerts the other night and now I am hooked.

As I was watching it, I realized that they are missing a huge opportunity to leverage social media to gain a deeper engagement with their existing audience & gain more fans by letting their existing base’s SMEDIA activity spread the word.

I am definitely NOT recommending that they clutter up the incredible concert footage by streaming tweets onto the screen or anything.  Don’t mess with the best thing about the channel.  I am however, recommending that they do a better job of using social media to connect the people who are watching a concert or anticipating one that is coming up.

A few suggestions…

• Connect up twitter and Facebook conversations while a concert is playing
• Connect up Facebook conversations while a concert is playing
• Aggregate the twitter & Facebook conversations on the site displayed next to the available video
• Get the band involved for 1st runs on concerts; let them interact with the audience as part of the twitter conversations
• Let people browse through all the concerts & tag all their favorites to create a personal playlist that they can share to Facebook
• Leave the concert footage uncluttered, but display some of the top tweets & facebook posts at the bottom of the screen while the commercials are running
• Make the videos available online on thier site.  It is not going to be as high quality of an experience as watching it in HD on a bigscreen, but make them available & make them easy to share and embed.
• Provide easy event scheduling tools on Facebook and on the site to allow people to have Palladia parties

The last recommendation has nothing to do with social media, but everything to do with Palladia not making the same mistakes as MTV.  Keep it focused on the concerts and the great footage, and under no circumstances should Jersey Sbore ever make into the programming.

I normally don’t pay attention to car commercials.  I appreciate some sexy car porn videography as much as the next ad geek, but let’s be honest they all sort of look the same.

It’s funny what a great song can do to help make you look up and watch a commercial.  I did a doubletake when I looked up and realized that it was Lincoln that applied these cool tunes.  Who?  Lincoln…I thought they were dead, or at least most of their core customers were really old.

Blue hairs or not, I love the song picks they made for their commercials over the past year.  Great covers of two of my favorites songs.

Under The Milky Way (The Church)

Major Tom (David Bowie)

There are hundreds of books and articles already written about how fanatical gatherings randomly occur or how large groups get mobilized quickly, but this is the first time I have ever found a video that really captures an observation of the series of events that occur when a significant group activity is mobilized out of thin air.

The video captures the event in sort of a “Wild Kingdom” or “Crocodile Hunter” (Crikey!) style documentary on humans and how they interact.  I am making several assumptions, but here is my personal take on the events that unfold in the video (...feel free to read this in an excited Australian accent to enhance the experience):

• The Brave Wierdo (Guy #1) - This guy clearly could care less what anyone might think of him, and all he really wanted to do was dance.  He started off with no aspirations of doing anything else or recruiting anyone to join him.  He was just filled with pure unadulterated (…ok, he was probably a little adulterated) joy and he had to express it somehow so he hopped up and started dancing.  As a solo act, he is pretty much ignorant of everybody else at the concert is doing – as far as he is concerned it is just him, the band, and his dance.
• The Spark (Guy #2) - This guy was probably just about to start his own solo jam when he saw Guy #1 (Brave Weirdo), or maybe he was even already dancing in solo bliss off-camera  …but then he saw guy #1 and that changed everything.  Unlike our Brave Weirdo, Guy #2 was more aware of his surroundings and noticed that there was someone else that clearly shared his passion for this song.  Guy #2 was inspired by this and ran to join him without hesitation even though he does not know him.  The key here is that Guy #2 joining is what brings our Brave Weirdo out of his solo trance.  Now they are both dancing and are fully aware that others are watching them & while they are content to dance as a couple they are beginning to think it would be great if they could recruit a group to dance.  Guy #2 served as the spark to all of this.  Without him, BW would still just be dancing happily oblivious to the rest of the world.
• The Tipper (Guy #3) - This guy probably knows Guy #2 (The Spark) or maybe he was thinking about joining BW himself, but The Spark beat him to the punch because he was a little bit more self conscious and he hesitated.  After seeing that Spark had connected with BW and that they were clearly having a blast, Guy #3 (The Tipper) felt it was safe enough now and joined in.  Perhaps The Tipper knew several of the next few people who joined in next, but either way after he joined an important barrier was eliminated that had been keeping all the other people who thought this looked fun but were held back from doing so by their own inhibitions.  1 is strange, …2 is interesting but still a little scary, …but 3 is safe enough to join.
• The Environment - It has to be noted that the environment itself plays an vital role in this entire thing.  The music (Santigold – awesome!) is definitely the type of music that easily inspires dancing.  The heavy beat in all of her songs automatically makes you want to bump your head regardless of where you are when you hear it.  The location is an outdoor concert on a grassy hill with a lot of open space and it is gorgeous weather.  Surely the booze is available and there is smoke in the air, both of which provide a great catalyst to spreading the dance fest.

If the combination of all these actions by Guys 1 – 3 had not occured and the environment had not been conducive, then this would have just been a funny video of a strange dude wacked out of his head dancing around. Thank god for the Brave Wierdos, Sparks, and Tippers out there for having the Cahones to take something they are individually passionate about and serving as the inspiration that draws complete strangers together and turns them into a collective force.

This post definitely falls outside of my core blog focus of advertising …but it falls squarely in the “stuff I thought was cool” category that I am prone to post on occassion.

I stumbled across this band/ song earlier this week and keep listening to it.  Great song, and a very interesting background on the two guys that make up the band.  They both went to Harvard (where they formed the band originally) and instead of taking that degree and conquering Wall Street they dumped their talent into music.  If this is the type of music that they produce then I am glad they made that choice.  Enjoy!

In case the embedded video stops working click here to see the video for this badass song.