As we all know, I’ve got a thing for cute female singer-songwriters. Colour me shallow. I was keen, then, to learn more about Melissa McClelland when I saw her photo on photojunkie.ca (dude, you’ve got a spelling mistake in that entry’s title).
I always get irritated by music sites, because they’re inevitably built in Flash, difficult to navigate and play music by default (generally competing with music already playing on my machine). I immediately turn the music off (after struggling to find the off button), but may turn it on again when I’m ready to listen. In fact, for new visitors, what is the number one reason we visit a musician’s site? To hear their music.
I was originally encouraged by Ms. McClelland’s site because it didn’t automagically play music when I arrived. However, it took me at least 90 seconds to actually find out how play any of her songs. It didn’t help that the Flashly-flash pop-up wasn’t optimized for Firefox. After I finally got around to this page (actually, a framed page) and clicked Listening Post, I actually dug her debut album. It’s Sarah Harmeresque. Kudos to her for letting me sample her entire album.
UPDATE: I see that Melissa McCelland is coming to Richards on Richards this Saturday.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
My Bad….
Spelling mistake fixed… This is what happens when you post just before lunch. Of course that means your permalink is wrong now. (actually it still works, but points to the old page with the spelling error.)
Melissa definitely rocks the house.
Her single has been getting some rotation on MMM especially this past summer. If she is ever out in Vancouver you should definitely check her out.
That link is fixed.
musical artists generally have the most useless pages. I got quoted in Vincent Flander’s second book bitching about Sarah McLachlan’s site (from several years ago) that used the worst sort of mystery navigation (where you don’t get to see where the buttons go until you mouse over them. Bleah.)
Incidently, I adore Vincent Flanders. 🙂 (Author of “Web Pages that Suck: Learn Good Design by Looking at Bad Design” … he’s basically a guru for “What Not To Do”. 🙂
thanks for the link – currently listening to McCelland and enjoying it enormously too.