Ever since Pandora banned all users outside the United States, I’ve been craving a new place to find music that I would never have heard of otherwise.  A place to network and discuss music with other junkies of good melody, without the obnoxious flashing and flickering of WhoreSpace.

The iLike application on Facebook has been rather useful in this regard, as has Last.fm’s radio feature.  But I wanted something just a little more hands-on.  I like chatting with artists.  I like knowing they’re getting feedback, particularly if they’re up and coming, because the experience of knowing indie artists has made me acutely aware that they really can become discouraged at times.  They need to feel the love.

Solution:  The Sixty One

Here’s the idea:  sign up for a profile, and get listening.  Search for artists you may have heard of.  Give them a listen.  Add music and playlists to your profile like MySpace and such.  Bump the songs that you dig most using points, accumulated from using the site (ie, playing tracks via stream).  The idea being, those songs bumped the most chart to the main page, which benefits the artist and makes fans happy to help.

I’m having a healthy wander myself.  I floated in to check out Karen Kosowski’s profile there, did a search for Thao Nguyen (who I have been meaning to check out more and happily found 3 songs for), and now I’m checking out M83 per my friend Alison’s suggestion.  How fantastic and delicious!  I wonder who else I might find on here…

My lovelies:  get thee to this site immediately and have fun discovering!  And feel free to swing by my profile, where I am apt to quickly collect a vast number of songs worth listening to…

Likeadeadstar’s Profile @ TheSixtyOne