Also your app does horrible things to any sense of navigational flow that's normal on a website - I get it's more like a media player, but I hate media players.
And I will say that the design and interactions on thesixtyone.com were much much much nicer (which is especially notable for the two sites being so similar). But I did miss the ability to set up a preferred genre.
Its designed that way, so I get it that I need to press the button for genre and actually listen for something longer than 30 seconds (thus media player feel). Its what people really into discovering music probably are doing - spending their time feeding those sounds into their brains (and selecting newly discovered artist AND buying their music).
As per changing the music industry ("I just want to thank you for everything you do for independent artists."), it must be that artist do get discovered via the service (See prev. paragraph, I guess [my comment, not the article]). This 'function' is just not readily visible on the site. If this works that way, I would add I really like this 'magical', invisible twist in the service.
I guess the kind thing you want to see as an artist is a whole bunch of listens for an artist you think you can do better than. Or money.
You mean are not? :) It's interesting how many preconceptions we have - I mean, selecting 'ambient' I were prepared for getting fuzzy, 'not-exactly-what-i-call-ambient' stuff. Where in different kind of service (say, internet radio) I really want to get almost exactly what I mean by 'ambient'. Just part of a deal using such a service. Amazing how all this adds to perception of the service and its usability (and success or failure).
(If I ever write a book that will be about 'contexts'.) :)
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html
You can get away with it if a) you're doing something that really isn't a website (e.g., a game or a single-serving site), or b) your users come back an awful lot (e.g., Twitter).