I am a music fanatic. I love listening to it, playing it, but most of all I love to discover good new music. I love finding obscure bands and passing them on to my friends. I visit and subscribe to multiple music discovery sites such as Pandora, PureVolume, Myspace and AOL’s Full CD Listening Parties. When I find something good, I pass it along to people who I think would appreciate it.

Yesterday, however, I stumbled upon a new music discovery site that may just surpass all of the aforementioned sites. TheSixtyOne.com has introduced an awesome twist to music sites everywhere to help bands gain credibility. The idea behind the site is that bands upload their music, and then users vote for their favorite songs. The idea doesn’t stop there though. Each user is allotted 95 points upon registration. Voting for one of your favorite songs means a sacrifice of 5 points. The only way to regain your points is if other people vote for the same song you did. You gain 1 point per vote after your vote. If you exhaust all your points on crappy songs, then you use the site as a cool way to find new music. If you have good taste (like me), you discover awesome songs by awesome artists and send them on their way up to super stardom. It’s a lot of fun to watch your favorite local, ‘no-name’ bands become popular in a matter of hours.

The band I have my eye on is Chris Merritt. I’ve written about them before, but they are honestly worth writing about again. Their creative sound, toe tapping rhythms, and moving ballads make for a reputation that grows faster than a foot fungus on a homeless man’s foot during the middle of summer. In the past few weeks, they have sored to #2 on the leader board of TheSixtyOne.com, second only to Meiko*.

If you are in the mood to discover some great new music, I recommend setting up an account (voting for Chris and Meiko) and then surfing the database to your hearts content. Enjoy!

*A few hours after publishing this post, Chris Merritt overtook Meiko for the 1st place position.