Call it a comeback: Turntable.fm raises $7.5M | Hacker News Reader

Call it a comeback: Turntable.fm raises $7.5M

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98 pointsjbredeche64 comments

One thing I'm surprised doesn't exist yet is "podcast radio stations". Like, I want a podcast DJ to cue up 24 hours worth of programming into a channel and then I can tune in at any time and hear whatever podcast episode is on right now. Don't make me think, don't make me go out and discover new podcasts, just give me a stream of interesting audio content.

This is NPR One, no? That's why I've been using it - it gives you a nice steady stream of NPR's programming and outside podcasts, randomly sampled at first, which in time starts preferring your favored content (which it learns by you "liking" content).

https://one.npr.org/

Been listening to it for years, it's great stuff!

How did I have no idea this exists?!? Thank you for the pointer.

They used to include a blurb about it on all NPR podcasts. I think they removed it because local stations were complaing that they were diverting their listeners away from the local station to a centralized app. So it’s been more low key since then.

I hate to be that guy but isn't that just... Radio?

Isn't what you've described basically BBC Radio 4, or any of the NPR stations?

No, in the same way that the original Turntable.fm wasn't just radio.

Like, say I'm interested in true crime or D&D or behavioural economics, there's a bajillion podcasts out there on each topic and discovery is inefficient and time consuming. Instead of subscribing to podcast creators, I want a DJ to just have an audio stream going on at all times where I can just tune in when I want and it's something interesting being played.

Most people won't find very appealing the idea of missing the start of a podcast - and the conclusion if you have to stop listening before it ends.

Ok, so allow the user to rewind to the start of the current podcast and keep a track of unfinished ones

Sure, if we just forget about the "tune in at any time and hear whatever podcast episode is on right now" concept it makes more sense. It becomes just a list.

In the same sense that a smartphone is just a small computer and dropbox is just a file folder.

If you strip all the interesting parts of a concept (here curation, the dj personality, easy instant access, centralization, community, ...) it's going to sound lackluster.

Though personally I'd enforce synchronous listening if I ran that kind of service myself. Lots of radios have talk shows and listeners do just fine joining in the middle of a conversation.

All those interesting aspects which are not about synchronous listening are not stripped out when you have a personality-curated centralized list with a community and instant access. The problematic part is the “tune in and see what’s on”. Which is why many radio talk shows are also available as podcasts!

You have to license the songs which makes it difficult and expensive. Podcasts don’t qualify for the same type of statutory licensing that online radio stations provide due to predictability of song appearances and ability to replay (radio must be sufficiently shuffled and songs can’t be announced too far in the future). That’s the major difference from normal podcasting. Some public radio stations have licensed these kinds of programs but they are often geofenced based on IP address.

https://www.di.fm/ Has DJ shows and had been doing internet radio for a very long time

Those are not podcasts though. The original comment was wanting a radio like stream of varying podcasts on topics having nothing to do with EDM.

Above and Beyond Group Therapy already does this, but it's a weekly 2 hour mix

If you're into funk, hip-hop, R&B, check out the radio stream on https://www.wefunkradio.com/

There are already people doing something similar on ClubHouse right now. You can interact with a live audience and fund requests. I think you could also host political talk radio on there if they'd let you do it.

Actually I think that may be ClubHouse's future - if it survives.

Back in the day (1998), that was called Shoutcast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHOUTcast

Shoutcast also had streaming porn.

What genre? BBC and trance around the world, or even monstercat are similar to what you’re looking for.

Indie radio stations do the same and usually have a podcast “episode” per week with curated content

I'm not talking about brand new content, I want a platform where anyone can sign up and create a "channel" and then queue up a playlist of already existing podcast episodes to play in sequence and I can browse through and hop into different channels and be fed a diet of podcasts previously unfamiliar to me.

I'm pretty sure you can create and share playlists of podcasts on spotify, so there's that.

>we can continue to innovate and truly explore the cross section of social + music

Does anyone know what this website(?) does? It's invite-only and seems to be music related but the article doesn't really say much about what the company does.

Edit: After some more research it seems like sharing music with your friends in a common space, like Clubhouse but with everyone listening to a song.

The old turntable.fm was basically a chatroom in which people would take turns queueing songs for the entire room to listen to and talk about. You could like or dislike the song playing as well. If enough people downvoted the song it would be skipped.

It was pretty magical in summer 2011; I made real-life friends on TTFM and I learned about a ton of music I had never been previously exposed to. I was disappointed when it died because it really was a lot of fun.

I built and host an open source project that sounds very similar, but instead uses Spotify Connect to play via any spotify device:

http://www.soundbounce.org/

I have seen a bunch of these lately as I was researching another alternative to Turtable.fm. Turns out more than half my friends don’t have Spotify so I can’t use it with them. The genius of the old TT was that it (a) had very cute avatars and UX in general and (b) it didn’t require you to pay for a separate service. I wouldn’t mind paying myself that allowed me a certain sized “room” but the moment everyone else must sign up for an external service, let alone a paid one, it becomes a non-starter.

I don't know TT's interface but perhaps https://github.com/calzoneman/sync which can pull media from Youtube, Soundcloud, Twitch, Vimeo, etc.

That’s the problem, isn’t it. The 2011 Turntable was free, but couldn’t monetize it, so it shut down. Commercial music needs to be paid for somehow.

Then charge me as the organizer fir a room of a certain size. But don’t make every one of my guests pay. I am ok creating a virtual DJ space for me and my 30 closest friends. I’m less ok with every one of them having to open up their wallets to sign up for their own subscription even if the amount of money in total is the same.

It was unfortunate they were before the times where music labels did deals with innovative businesses.

TikTok licenses all their music to allow them to freely use the IP in their experience.

> like Clubhouse but with everyone listening to a song

I really hope they didn't have to make that pitch to the VCs.

btw, it's not invite only. The password is just "speakeasy" and was to limit the initial flood of people.

I never used Turntable FM but looking at the cover image for that article: Is that art done by the same person who designed Github's octocat?

I can't notice how similar the middle character's face looks to Octocat's face from Github.

He doesn't have them in his portfolio anymore, so I don't have proof, but a friend with no affiliation with Github designed the original avatars.

Surprised and happy to see this! I was an avid user of the old Turntable.fm which sadly shut down. (I would love to get an invite for the new service if anyone has any ;) )

Related, there is also jqbx.fm which integrates with Spotify which is basically the same thing, can recommend.

“Speakeasy"

Aw, the opportunity to say that they turned the tables was _right there_

Wait a second. There was an old employee that created turntable.com as a competitor which is why Billy brought back the .FM version.

Now the .com redirects to .FM. What happened? That site had raised thousands of dollars. What happened to that money? Did they scam people?

Site is launched and started in 2020: http://tt.fm and http://beta.tt.fm

This new version is late: https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb

Background: http://jperla.medium.com/founding-of-turntable-a69f0d9db34d

So you never actually had control of turntable.com?

tt.fm was the original mobile web domain.

Turntable.com was a domain squatter for the past 10 years until this week.

But turntable.com pointed to your new endeavor, did it not? I remember going to turntable.com several months ago and it went to what is now tt.fm.

Anyway, I hadn't seen those messaged by Billy. I take back what I've said in the past - what a bizarre reaction. I don't really think you should have taken over the branding per se but I see that Billy also wasn't acting in good faith either.

I polled the OG fans to ask them what to call the all-new website: over 90% said “Turntable” and we had verified the naming rights — so that’s what the fans wanted. Fans decided.

The original http://tt.fm already launched before this. You can play music together today.

Details:

https://jperla.medium.com/i-worked-with-billy-back-in-2011-w...

I loved the original turntable but that site for sure looks like vaporware and the article is just a drama fest between the original founders. Nope.

It’s not — you can play music right now: http://beta.tt.fm

Totally forgot what Turntable.fm was until I saw the gorilla bouncer on thier home page. I can't believe it was 2013 when that service shut down, that's such a long time ago.

I loved turntable.fm while at work, so much chill music was on there. Talk about being "too soon" and ahead of their time. I hope they do well.

I truly believe we need a system where if you're paying for licensed music on any platform that you're able to play/listen to it anywhere else. Certainly it would take law as a foundation to lead to this functionality.

Anyone know any organizations working towards this legally or technically?

Before Turntable.fm there was a small site called "Listening Room" by Abe Fettig

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/listening-room/

It was in the days when everyone had an mp3 collection - so you create a room with your friends and upload mp3s to a queue. It was very simple without any of the 'party' vibe of Turntable.fm.

I had a blast in there with a bunch of people from metafilter and had a go at making something similar. The eclecticness of what people uploaded was fascinating - something that didn't happen in my (admittedly brief) foray into Turntable.fm where it seemed each crowd would aggressively vote-off any track that wasn't bang on some ultra specific genre.

But the problem with 'chatroom where you upload your mp3 to a queue' sites like "Listening Room" was the licencing (even though you could try and make the case that its just like playing a record to friends at a party). I looked into licensing something like that as an internet radio station but it didn't work because of the multiple rooms.

So I'd love to see a modern version of 'chatroom where you play music to each other' but properly licensed and probably allowing a mix of streaming from spotify and mp3 uploads. Guess its too niche to be worth the licencing hassle.

How common is this sort of re-launch?

Nice,I used to meet with former bandmates to listen to new music discoveries together, and since we moved away from our hometown, we were looking for something like this.

Hope to get an invite soon

> The team found a clever loophole around music rights in the form of YouTube videos

That site already existed as plug.dj, but that shut down in February when they ran out of money.

It basically worked the same way as Turntable.fm, except instead of picking a song list or uploading songs, you would search YouTube and queue up YouTube videos.

The only limitation was that some YouTube videos are set so that they can't be embedded into other web pages. Songs uploaded to YouTube like this couldn't be played on plug.dj.

From my memory, Turntable was the predecessor to Plug.dj. Plug got big once Turntable shut down.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=JP&q=t...

Uh. Plug.dj came after turntable.fm. Turntable was already doing this.

I wish them the best of luck, but I suspect that in the age of TikTok and personalized playlists, Turntable's time has passed.

I personally felt this experience recently with it's revival. I have a group that was quite active 10 years ago and we got back together for a few weeks once the platform revived. Unfortunately the room died out soon after. For me personally it was just easier to use Spotify due to built up playlists, mobile app, discovery weekly etc. I also felt a lot of pressure needing to be the DJ, rebuilding my playlist (some songs not available in certain countries) and always upvoting songs to not get kicked off stage. I hope they can continue to innovate in the space and carve out more sticky use cases.

The landscape/competition is vastly different today

Yea, may be niche. There's still a fun aspect to the DJ part, but is there much value for the audience? Do the DJs add anything beyond what a personalized playlist that Apple or Spotify serves up?

It's not an either / or though, there is room for multiple things.

Talk about turning the tables :D

For anyone who's interested I'm currently building a few social features for Spotify at https://volt.fm.

You can already create a profile and share and compare your stats with your friends. You also get a nice page for your playlists (see https://volt.fm/playlist/x48gzqnr2xoctxu1).

I'm now looking for beta testers for the next big feature that lets you share music (and play what's shared with you) right within the Spotify apps. Let me know if you want to join the list.

It would be good to call out how this is different from Last.fm, which also has the advantage of not being tied to a particular platform.

The biggest difference is that volt.fm supports playlists and as I mentioned, the upcoming feed feature for sharing music with a group of people.

This version is late: https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb

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