Massive Multiplayer Music Discovery at The Sixty One

As popular as mixing music and games are these days — it was all over PAX 2008 (can we use the term Music Game Rage yet?) this past weekend — only makes sense that somebody would make an MMO based on music. Check out TheSixtyOne.com (beta) which calls itself (is this the first?) Massively Multiplayer Music Discovery (MMMD).

Sort of like Pandora/iLike/last.fm only with points earned for completing different tasks like (via TheSixtyOne FAQ):

• Listening to music on The Rack (+1-40 points per song, reward based on dice roll)
• Logging in daily (+20 points)
• Inviting a friend (+20 points and +50 points for each level they achieve or +100 points per level if your friend is an artist). [note: I invited my son who shares with me an affection for music. He's digging the site already]

As you navigate around the site, the songs you listen to keep playing and you can easily find out more about the current song by hovering over the floating left menu. From this menu you can also pause, skip or go back to prior song, favorite and/or ‘bump’ the song.

Bumping, similar to a digg vote, you must spend some of your points, so use for music you like and/or think will reach the front page of the site. Via the FAQ:

The primary way to earn points is by bumping music. It’ll cost you points upfront, but as songs you bump become more popular you can earn more points! If you hover your mouse over a ‘bump’ button, you’ll notice that it will indicate how much it costs to bump that particular song.

To add to enticement factor in using your points, there are some unlockable achievements like:

- “sensei of soul” first bump a song to homepage
- “lewis & clark” bump songs in under-explored genres
- “groupie” show your love by max bumping songs
- “the romantic” spend more points than you earn on songs

Leveling up by listening to music adds a little fun, but you’re limited to how many points can be earned each day listening to music from ‘The Rack’ to 50 points per day once you’ve amassed 300 points. Since you get like 90 points simply for registering for the site and 1-40 by listening to each song, you’ll reach that 300 w/50 point daily limit quickly. During the writing of this post I went from 0 points to 250.

My first bump (cost of 13 points) went to a piano cover version of Through The Fire and Flames (embed below for those not reading via RSS):

Guitar Hero players know this song to be one of the most difficult tracks in the game. It doesn’t sound much easier to play on the piano.

I’m not sure I’d label TheSixtyOne very MMO and in fairness to them, they aren’t either. The social features are fairly limited and in what MMO are you limited to how much leveling you can do in a day? I’m sure the limits are there to prevent people from gaming the system by just leaving the music on streaming all day long and getting massive points and high levels but would rather see them add unlimited points earning for people who can prove they aren’t a bot (perhaps by checking with captcha or code to earn points for listened to songs). Might be a hassle music fans don’t want to go through, but wouldn’t cap the leveling and would be more MMO-ish. 

This limit cap is a bit deceptive as you can still earn points for a certain number of overall plays with the “listen up” achievement:

level 1 – 5 plays (you’ll get this one right away)
level 2 – 100 plays
level 3 – 1,000 plays
level 4 – 5,000 plays
level 5 – 25,000 plays

Also, you can do the standard social fare: add friends (you can add me here, if you like), share embedded songs as shown above or bother email your friends. You can also create your own playlists and earn points for people who listen to your ’station’ which I haven’t fully investigated how to do yet.

All in all, I like the creativity of TheSixtyOne but the subtitle of massively multiplayer (emphasis on ‘player’) is a bit deceptive. More like social music with a twist. Decent timing considering the music game rage, there I used the phrase. The music game rage is on.

Oh, and as for VTOR PAX 2008 coverage, expect to start reading more about what was seen there soon.