Right now I’m listening to a live piano performance by Imogen Heap (she calls it “piano noodlings”) being broadcast over USTREAM, announced over Twitter a few minutes ago.
Several hundred other people are watching too, and it’s a new kind of musical experience thanks to the real-time Web. People have spoken of it before, and this is a fascinating aspect of it.
We can all sit down in front of the computer in our individual homes and listen to an Imogen Heap concert, live, together. It’s not quite the real thing, of course, but it’s different. Good different. It’s simple, spontaneous, and inclusive.
I can’t wait to see what other artists and other game-changers come up with in this next era of the Web.
thesixtyone, which calls itself “a music adventure”, is an online community where artists upload their music and listeners decide which songs are the best. As The Drop puts it, the site is an “almost game like format [that] consistently keeps you interested” with its “influence points” system. Points measure your influence as a listener or your popularity as an artist.
- As a listener you spend points to vote for or “bump” a song. When others like the songs you bump, or when you spend more time on the site, you gain points and reach higher levels, which unlock special abilities like multiple bumps.
- As an artist you level up to unlock special abilities like uploading additional songs.
It seems to be a trend for websites to liken themselves to RPGs with jargon like leveling up and unlocking abilities even if reward systems have been around for much longer than games. But I’m more interested in how well they used AJAX.
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