TheSixtyOne

Thesixtyone (t61) was a music streaming platform that employed collaborative filtering to organize, market, and sell music contributed by independent performers. James Miao and Samuel Hsiung founded the site, which got early funding from Paul Graham. It was first released in beta in January 2008, with additional funding from Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. Highway 61, a highway with significant roots in American music culture, is the inspiration for the site. "Thesixtyone's guiding idea is to support the creative middle class, allowing talented musicians the opportunity to make a life generating music," according to the site's "bazaar," where users can purchase songs or mp3 albums posted by artists. Artists can also use the site to license their music under Creative Commons licenses and make it available for free download.

Thesixtyone launched a new design on January 20, 2010, with a focus on high-resolution photos, location, and lyrics. Some users were offended by the new design, and they vented their frustrations on the website's Facebook page. Many of the site's most frequent visitors left after the revamp. In a site announcement on January 1, 2016, thesixyone cofounder Samuel Hsiung appeared to admit that the redesign was a mistake, apologized for recent negligence, and restored to the site design prior to the disputed alterations. Thesixtyone was going down, and servers would go offline at midnight on May 1, 2017, according to a note posted on the site in April 2017.

Website: thesixtyone.com