This is one of the most radical changes I've ever seen in a website- it seems like it would have made more sense to add it as a an option, and slowly make it the default. At the very least, they should have had a ton of tooltips all over the site. "Remember X feature? You can now do it here." GrooveShark did a great job of having little helpful popup boxes when they redesigned.

I can't think of a single site I currently use that could pull off such a massive redesign. It would be like Digg replacing the whole site with something from http://labs.digg.com/. Pretty? Sure. Usable? Not so much. Users don't necessarily dislike the new site, they're just confused.

And nobody likes to be confused.

Giving their existing users some direction would have been nice, but what a differentiation they've pulled off in a crowded market music streamers. I used the site a bit last year and wandered away. I use it most of the day Friday while at work, it was the first time I'd been back in months.

Basically, I think they may lose some of their current hardcore users, but they'll pick up a whole slew of new ones.

It may be different, but it seems like the last people you want to confront with differentiation are your existing users. I wonder if the best way to release such a radical redesign would be to only default new users to the new interface. Let existing users opt-in to a radically different experience, in their own time.

Just did with me.

The new design is gorgeous, yes. No one is calling it ugly. But ugh, it is quite unusable.

I think it's usable. It's like a radio station that plays awesome music.

Of course, I never used the site before the redesign, so what do I know?

Before it was a place to interact with music lovers and music artists that you may have never met before (that is pretty much gone now).

Before it was a game, you start off with hearts and get more as you level up and listen to music, that is still there but because interaction is gone supporting artists with the game seems nonexistent and competing is nonexistent. (Not everyone played the game.)

Now (as you said) you have pretty pictures and a radio instead of basically an iphone/ipod with a bunch of contacts and connections to artists.

Yeah, I saw the old version. It looked like a not-particularly-unique music-based social network, so I always bounced from the homepage.

I don't care about games, points, hearts, enthusiasts, community, or any of that -- I want good music playing in the background while I do other things.

IMO this new redesign is both unique and more accessible. If it's about music the music should be front-and-center, no? Sometimes you have to cannibalize your users to reach a larger audience.

I know I'm probably going to go to T61 every day, now. I've already bought two albums based off of what I found there, and before the redesign it was totally uninteresting to me.

I agree completely. I have found a few different artists already and have spent the entire evening on the new site.

mark me down as saying its ugly: the colors are inharmonious and impact is a terrible typeface choice.

while technically usable, its not necessarily something i want to use.

I can't say it's gorgeous. It's a little hard-edged for my taste. But i use it nonetheless. Isn't that all that matters?

I don't know why the hell they didn't launch it as a second site under new branding -- there would have been no pushback at all.

Some people want a better MySpace, some want a better Pandora. There's no reason the two demographics can't have their own sites based on the same data.

This. It's different enough that it could have been successful as an entirely separate venture.

Running one site is hard enough, you would lose a lot of focus running two.

If by 'better Pandora' you mean 'available where I am' then yes, I'd like a better Pandora.

A music-making friend of mine pointed me to the site about 6 months ago. I checked it out but not really being into his music didn't really see how this site was any better or more interesting than Myspace.

But when the redesign came out I stood up and paid attention, it just looks so great. For an artist who doesn't have the expertise or money to create a great looking website this is awesome, attractive and functional for sharing their music.

I sent it to a bunch of people I know who work at varying levels of the music industry and they felt the same, a few are creating pages now.

I'd say the redesign / relaunch has been successful in terms of user growth though more consultation with their existing community might have spared some of this backlash.

This sort of things makes me wonder about the difference between business code and UI code and the effect of splitting them. Right now the argument is that it's too expensive to maintain two separate user interfaces. But as more and more pages start moving all their business code behind web services that might change (since the cost to maintain a UI would go way down)

You could even get situations where third party companies agree to maintain an older interface while paying the company a small cut.

Dammit, all I wanted to see was the site, and now I'm hooked on a new band.

I really like thesixtyone, but talk about TechCrunch astroturfing - are there really that many users to the61 that some of them being upset is a TC-worthy story?

Never used the site before, but I kind of like it. Perhaps they pulled off a coup by getting all this press?

I like the idea of it just being a Pandora for indy music, the simple interface really appeals to me there. But ya, I never saw the previous version so who knows.

Ok I take it back.. (a bit)

How the hell do you buy songs? I mean this is supposed to be the point right? So I found an artist I like, shouldn't there be a really obvious way to buy the album/track? (or telling me it isn't available for purchase yet?)

That kind of makes my head explode.. I want to support the artist but it isn't letting me.. arr!

I'm new to the site (never heard of it before), and I just did exactly that. Ran across a song that's sorta cool... and... no clue how to purchase. ohh well.

I enjoyed doing the quests when I first started using thesixtyone, which got me used to the features and the layout pretty easily.

I'm a bit surprised that they haven't done 'redesign intro' quests to acclimate people to the new design.

I'd be interested to know if they did any usability tests and what the results were. Even just the basic cheap usability tests like describe in Don't Make Me Think.

If anyone has any information on their testing process, please share!

You don't make leaps like that with "usability testing".

Despite a few obligatory niggles the design is a masterpiece, obviously coming straight out of the heads and hands of a few (or even a single) gifted individuals.

This "controversy" will inevitably drive more new users to the site.

what's wrong with just stick with old.thesixtyone.com ?

Ah, that was the /old/ site (and I forgot "Facebook connect button"). The new one is even more incomprehensible.

That said, it's kind of fun, visually attractive (although incomprehensible), and I like the ANGLERFISH HAILEY WOJCIK song that plays on first load. (That's a verbatim cut and paste, and I guess I should say it's to their credit that cut and paste works at all. It's so old media, after all.) If I can budget some time for doing nothing but listening to music, I'll play with it some more. I don't think it's useful for people that don't have that time though.