thesixtyone, a Y-Combinator funded music exploration community, launched in early 2008. The service began life as a pretty typical web-based social networking site. Over the last couple of years, it has gone through some interface updates and improvements, but for the most part it seemed to toe the social network line with its user interface.

The image below shows the service immediately before the latest redesign. It was definitely clean, well organized, and functional. There are even some sweet keyboard shortcuts to make controlling the music easier!

Last week thesixtyone distinguished itself from the web’s pile of music recommendation sites by completely redesigning their service. The new design is bold and immersive. While a song plays, the background of the entire page becomes a beautiful full-screen photograph of the current artist. At the same time, smaller images fade in and out in a slide show fashion. The effect is impressively cinematic, and gives artists a much better opportunity to show listeners what makes them unique… especially when compared to the limiting avatars and thumbnails used by the old design.

The other major update is the minimization of the music controls. A small menu in the upper right corner that appears only when the cursor is moving allows users to pause/play, adjust the volume, add a song to a playlist, and toggle repeat on or off. Large arrows on either side of the screen provide navigation between the previous and next song. Other functionality includes the ability to build playlists, and to share, love and comment on songs.

While the redesign is getting plenty of positive attention, a number of users have been less than happy with the drastic changes. The design is, without question, a sea change, so some degree of uprising isn’t surprising. The good news is that users can still access the old site.

I don’t know exactly how the update was rolled out, so maybe there would have been a better, less painful way to introduce the new design to the community. There are definitely parts of the UI that I don’t quite understand and wish were better explained, but the overall experience is engaging enough that I’m willing to let them go for now. Whatever the future holds for thesixtyone, I hope more companies become willing to take risks with bold new approaches to delivering experiences online.