Discover and get discovered : Fairtilizer & Thesixtyone

A couple of bands have got great attention on MySpace and afterwards got signed by major labels. The interaction between band and user getting to know the known and unknown audience / band is a powerful platform.

MySpace is by far the dominating player on this market. But there are other interesting sites definitely worth checking out.

Thesixtyone.com
Thesixtyone.com has a lot of features that should encourage users to listen to new songs, share and commenting on them through letting people get achievements. Both bands and users raise in levels according to their activity and likeness.
There is almost no editorial stuff. The creation of top lists is through the users “hearting” songs. But it’s really nice to explore new mostly unknown bands / songs. Going through the toplists contain a lot of quality; these are professional upcoming (pop and indie) bands. I kind off miss the surprisingly interesting or different band. But that says more about me than the great site.

Small note: I’m not completely sure how the upload from artists works. Alphabeat has two profil pages. I guess that wouldn’t be the case, if it actually was Alphabeat who was behind? Such flaws were also the case with MySpace a couple of years ago.

Fairtilizer

“Fairtilizer is a Do It Yourself Music Club providing tools and services for artists, labels, and media to share, promote, and distribute today’s best new music.”

Fairtilizer – as Myspace – needs the artists. But from my user perspective Fairtilizer manage to bring up new music to my attention. The editorial content is spare but helpful including featured tracks as well as “Club members”. And for the new users the hitlists provide new, exclusive! tracks. There are four sections. Hip/ Rap, Indie, Techno and Cover. Off cause I gotta love the cover section (wuhu!), but with the narrow offer of music genres, it’s more a niche site. To me it has a great appeal, but in all it has less users than Thesixtyone.com.

Small note: Alphabeat is the top 1 band in indie with an acustic Daft Punk Cover (Digital Love).