Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

It is no secret that MySpace has completely changed the music scene.  Arguably, the artists MySpace music page is more important than their website.  But other sites are creeping up and taking advantage of something MySpace has not mastered:  new music.

Sites like thesixtyone.com and others are helping new artists get noted.  By allowing voting and an incentive to listen to new stuff, these sites are creating fans for little known acts from all over the world.  Take Temple Scene, a two person ensemble from the UK.  Their songs have done very well on thesixtyone.com and on MySpace.  I had the chance to get the bands input on the value of other sites that focus on new music.

Gadgetell:  Which is more important for building a fan base: MySpaceor thesixtyone.com?

Temple Scene: To be honest, it’s difficult to say if we are getting more listeners from MySpace or T61, because in both cases we have a smallish group of vocal fans, but we have no way of knowing how many other people might be interested. Certainly we can reach more people on MySpace, but on T61 there’s a much higher ratio of people who actually end up getting into the band (being a music lovers’ site).

Gadgetell: So how how many people are we talking about?

Temple Scene:I have no idea! That’s part of the motivation for selling the songs - we’re not going to sell enough to make real money, but as we release each E.P. we’ll actually have some data about how many people there are who like our songs enough to spend their time/money getting them! It’ll be weeks before we get any sales data though.

From an interview at Max Bumps:
silkworm: What effect, if any, has your experience with thesixtyone.com had on the process of putting together the new EP? What are your thoughts about the site?

Temple Scene: Until recently, we’d been streaming the music and keeping our options open about the next move, but the fantastic feedback we’ve been getting on the61 encouraged us to re-assess that. There’s nothing more satisfying for a musician than people wanting to buy your music - and nothing more frustrating than telling them they can’t! The best part has been seeing the reaction to our songs. We just try and make music we like, but it’s amazing to find out that other people like it too.

Like a lot of people, we found the61 on Digg, and it was immediately clear that someone had finally solved some of the fundamental problems with music discovery sites. There are countless places that use competitions and votes as a way to get extra traffic from a band’s existing fan base, but where no one has any incentive to stay and explore. the61 actually puts listeners in contact with new music, and makes it fun - any site that can do that is something special.

You can download a free copy of Temple Scene’s Story and stream their first E.P. at thesixtyone.com, last.fm and MySpace.