Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year | Hacker News Reader

Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year

thenextweb.com

45 pointswspruijt35 comments

I actually think one Interaction decision they made (intentionally or unintentionally) that helped with engagement a lot is the lack of a queue system for becoming DJ. Forcing people to be first to click to become a DJ when one leaves means that anyone who wants to be DJ means that everyone who wants to DJ has to be paying close attention/very engaged in the room, which probably leads to more chats, more thought put into what they will spin, etc.

This taps into people's natural desire to be seen and heard and impact the world around them, and also makes them more invested the longer they wait -- if you've been waiting for a DJ spot to open up for 30 minutes, or haven't been able to click in fast enough, you feel almost obligated to stay until you get one. And then once you get one, you feel like the cost of getting there was such that you don't want to give the seat up.

Mostly, turntable is growing because they are subsidizing free music. The social is gravy, but people love free stuff. At some point they will need to actually cover their costs (note the shutdown of non-us traffic) and it's going to be a lot more difficult.

Growth has never been the hard part for music startups. Making money has.

If you want free music, particularly on your own terms, why not just use Grooveshark? Finding free music on the internet hasn't been a problem for a long while.

Grooveshark is pretty popular too.

Like @noisebleed I'll have to disagree. It's extremely easy to find any of the tracks people play on Turntable simply by doing a Google search, not to mention other sites like Grooveshark.

The reason turntable is popular is due to the social elements, specifically vanity. You're on a stage in front of an audience getting points for how sick your tracks are. It's a basic human emotion that is triggered that makes the site so popular. The discovery aspect is great as well but I don't think it's as important to the sites success.

There are hundreds of ways to get free music that haven't had the same explosive growth rate as turntable. I think the article is right in that they've done very well with subtle but surprisingly deep social aspects.

I do think they have a huge legal problem looming, especially with regards to letting you play tracks others have uploaded. Google and Amazon are already fighting the 'public performance of copyrighted works' issue, and turntable is far more blatant.

I agree that it's not the free music aspect that drives Turntable. It's that social recognition for a good song. I was using it with another member of my startup on Friday (before it was banned in Canada) and we created our own room. Literally just the two of us rocking out trading songs. If someone's song sucked, we'd chirp the other person. It makes listening to music fun, which was previously lacking.

Definitely agree on the legal problem here. The whole non-US shutdown doesn't look promising.

They've just (last hour) restricted to "US only". Big shame, loved the service from here in the UK.

For all you Lawers and Biz-Dev people who keep crying for a developer to help them do their next 'web hit'.

How about taking your skills and trying to find a way to bring media (music/video) to the 6 billion people who do live outside of the US ?

Now that would be a real startup !

It's not binary, the choice isn't "US or everywhere else". It's getting one country at a time, and the US is, arguably, a better place to start with.

I also noticed this just now. I really hope they will fix these licensing problems as soon as possible, but I wouldn't count on it.

I loved turntable... I don't know how to cope with this newly discovered grief. How am I supposed to move on with my life, when I know that tt is still alive and well for some users!?

I will proceed to take this as a personal insult. An attack on all of Europe. A declaration of war. To arms!

This sucks! I was using it just a few minutes ago. I am so sick of the music industry and their retarded licensing system.

Yes, this is very sad. I was really enjoying this.

For the time being, it seems like that would open up an opportunity to launch a similar product in the UK with local licensing. Get to work!

Well as much as it sucks, I am sure they would have gotten into legal hell otherwise. Thanks very much to the current copyright system.

Go play with Spotify ;)

Spotify is only available in seven countries. I have access to neither :|

In that case the pirate bay, et al is probably your best option...

I think a lot of the growth is/will be in offices where people are working at computers. A group of people with headphones at workstations DJing to each other is very compelling, and turns a part of the environment that can be isolating into something social. Likewise, friends working at different companies can be plugged in to each other in an ambient way while working. That's the coolest part so far.

Beyond that, there seems to be a lot of ad-less Pandora going on: join a genre-focused room and get a stream of stuff you may or may not know without the labor of building a playlist in Grooveshark. As stated elsewhere, this can be annoying though, because people suck at sticking to the stated genre (ie. frantic Drum and Bass in a "chillout" room).

If it really gets traction, it will also become a target for bands to market themselves. I've already seen some DJs spinning their own songs.

Big hurdle: it's ugly. They should fix that, especially since it's basically a "place" to hang out.

Even with the restrictions in place I think Turntable is still in questionable territory as regards licensing. The "non-interactive" claim they seem to be making (at least, that's the way the linked article puts it) probably won't hold up in court.

Which is a shame, because I really love the service and it just has to be driving loads of traffic through the affiliate links to iTMS and Spotify. Hopefully one of these days the RIAA will wake up to the possibility of alternate revenue streams and realize how valuable discovery services like Turntable are. Until then, I'll use Turntable until it gets shut down, and then I'll jump to whomever springs up to replace it.

Just tried to sign up and apparently they very much want me to sign up via facebook. Invites to people who want to login with their email are apparently only given out "sometimes". Great! Thanks for that! So I have to give my data to Mark Zuckerberg who tries his best to make it as public as possible, in order to use your service? But it get's better: If you sign up via email, you have to answer "Who'd win in a wrestling match, lemmy or god?" To answer this they expect you to watch some silly Youtube video. No thanks! What ever happened to making sign up as easy as possible? With that attitude turntable can keep its service for itself!

False alarm? I'm in the busiest room on Turntable.fm right now and there's 15 people in here. Maybe 200 total using it right now. Looks like the US-only restriction isn't working out too well.

The licensing restrictions on this are jarring ("We can only play you a preview of this song until someone else starts DJ'ing") but I guess they can't have it just be a personal music service.

Is that a licensing restriction? I thought it was just to force people to use it socially, instead of just sitting around and listening to tunes on your own.

This is just a fun website.

The level of engagement between DJs and listeners is very special. It beats the algorithmic radio stations of Pandora hands down.

I disagree with your beat down of Pandora. I find one of the most frustrating things about turntable.fm to be the lack of appropriateness of songs to their rooms genre (if we're going to compare it to Pandora). I can listen to a personalized Pandora channel for hours at a time while down voting a few songs. I find myself hitting the lame button in a DJ room as often as awesome because you're at the mercy of the DJ's taste.

I think the idea is great for what it is right now: a way for a group of people to get together and share some music with each other. I just don't see being comparable to Pandora.

It really depends which room. With Pandora you're at the mercy of their recommendations too, but they aren't really held accountable for bad recommendations. Sure there is an algorithm, but I would bet on people picking songs any day over an algorithm if anything were on the line. With Turntable.fm, you're playing for your reputation, and some people take that VERY seriously. Some of the bigger rooms I've been in have had incredible selection, especially the ones with DJ thresholds.

To a point. I don't visit public rooms, but when I'm playing with my friends, there's usually a few songs that I outright hate, but can't force it to skip. :)

For all the talk about web-based streaming music services as 'discovery', it's odd to note this fixation on "labels". Is there any reason why a service like this couldn't cater to "unsigned" or "non-label" music? This would arguably help "discovery" far more than Arcade Fire fans getting together to spin another AF track.

I used to spend a lot of time on t61 which does exactly what you're talking about. http://www.thesixtyone.com/

I stopped using it when they did the big redesign. I find the new interface nowhere near as good or useful as the old one but I guess if you started using the site today it would probably seem fine to you.

got any screen grabs of the old design? This site looks neat but would like to see where it came from. archive.org seems a bit spotty.

I take that back, they have the old design under the 'old' subdomain. Cool.

Thanks, I had no idea about that. Looks like I can start using the site again. =)

thanks - i'd forgotten about this one

I can't seem to get the service to work. The page loads but I get a blank screen. Oh well.

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