Turntable.fm raising $5-10 M. at $40 M. Valuation | Hacker News Reader

Turntable.fm raising $5-10 M. at $40 M. Valuation

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89 pointsbproper44 comments

Its not a pivot, its a completely different business with the same founders.

Closest off the top of my head: Odeo > Obvious > Twitter. As in this case, investors who didn't want to continue were offered the opportunity to get their money back.

Hence the beauty of the concept: you can fail without "failing".

I'd like to see Google implement a similar feature for Google+ by integrating it with Google Music. They could implement it in Hangout somehow.

I was thinking Google Hangouts may be the thing that prevents Turntable.fm from gaining more traction, you can essentially already "ghetto dj" in a hangout by playing YouTube videos of music.

I don't see it that way. Turntable has its focus on turning people into DJs and finding rooms (genres) of music suitable to your tastes. The DJ queue system works well, and the feedback system too, as does finding a track to play. I wouldn't last long if I had to sort through a YT results page.

Wait. Digital YouTube party via hangout? (http://xkcd.com/920/) Mind blown.

Am I crazy for thinking that it's inevitable they get sued by the recording industry?

My thoughts exactly.

Aren't they licensing all that content? I imagine they wouldn't be sued for what they were attempting to do, but for what users are capable of exploiting.

They're paying for content that they provide from the catalog, but I'm not sure if they're paying any fees for the mashups, bootlegs and whatnots that I upload on my own account.

Also, Indie While You Indie is teh best room on there.

They're using MediaNet (http://www.mndigital.com/) as their primary content/license provider, so they're likely fine esp if they comply with takedown notices of user-uploaded content.

THey are, but remains up to question if they are paying per stream properly. I'm sure they talked to Medianet and hence its now US only.

Medianet, ironically, was a label lead initiative :)

Didn't it take months of license negotiations for Google to offer the ability to store and stream music you already own to your own device? Turntable seems a fair bit more ambitious than that.

They seem just as ambitious as Grooveshark which seems to be doing fine.

MediaNet is one component of things. I think of them more akin to a CDN. Turntable still needs to pay SoundExchange, who collect funds for streaming rights, as I understand it. Likely Turntable is fine (for now), but spending lots of cash per stream, until the inevitable point where labels may make the decision that this isn't truly an non-interactive service (certainly not for the DJs), hence requiring additional licensing fees.

Really interested to see who ends up funding their round. So many investors have told me that they want nothing to do with the music industry (streaming rights especially are not too attractive a proposition) and won't fund anything. On the other hand, they don't want to be the ones to miss a gold mine because they are stuck in thinking from 10 years ago about an evolving industry. If Turntable can do one thing, I would hope it would be to help foster a more creative community around music application creation. Having that community have the blessing of the music industry themselves would be the ultimate goal along with changing the licensing structure for developers (David Isrealite of the NMPA talked about this here: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/others/president-of-nmpa-call...). The amazing innovation I have seen at 2 MusicHackday.org events lets me know that there is so much that will be done with music in the future, if developers and entrepreneurs are given the ability to pursue these dreams without fear of prosecution.

It's not a Pivot when you do something completely new.

Let's make a new buzzword for that, then, heh.

Same team, same investors, same capital.

New code, new idea.

Uber-Pivot?

Restart, redo

I'll be interested in seeing how turntable.fm evolves. I love the idea, but if I'm interested in background music, I find it can often be inconsistent. It'd be cool if more rooms had a single DJ, so at least you knew what to expect.

Go to tha "Ambient Chillout & Trip-hop" station, that's all u ever need

I expect they'll get more, but that was quick!

They may end up raising more, but from what I hear, they are choosing VCs based on who can secure them top engineering talent for critical positions, not who cuts the biggest check.

That's the lay of the land in Silicon Alley right now. Tech talent is worth its weight in gold.

Any idea, how did they pitch?

they are choosing VCs based on who can secure them top engineering talent for critical positions

I hear all this talk about top engineering talent. What is the difference between these guys and the rest of the engineers in the valley? Most startups do not do anything specially intelligent so what difference does it make?

Note:I am not being sarcastic. I am just curious.

> guys and the rest of the engineers in the valley?

Location. They're in NYC.

This is the best explanation to your question that I know of.

http://www.quora.com/LikeALittle-startup/Why-do-you-need-gol...

Thanks. Great comments, but I doubt they answer the question.

The question was why do you need top engineering talent to build a website whose technology is not that complex. The point is that building technology that has to scale at the rate that Turntable (and LikeALittle) is growing is a very serious challenge that you can't afford to screw up. It takes serious tech chops, even if the app is not that complex.

Do good engineers really care who your VCs are? What influence can a VC have over a possible hire? (just curious.)

VC's have access to more information about a company than employees do. If you have the choice of places to work, do you want to work at a company vetted by Sequoia, who has the best deal flow there is, or vetted by a VC you've never heard of? Do you want to work for one whose follow-on war chest is hundreds of millions, or just a few million? One who will be able to help in crucial times, or one who adds no value? One whose involvement alone brings press at every new product announcement, or one who gets no extra attention from media? All things being equal, the value for an employee of working at a company with a top VC ought to be near the same as it is for the founders (with a little less upside).

Needs: - Pro interface (just a list of users, not all this animated nonsense) - Embeddable images in chat - Sponsored rooms

so like IRC + shoutcast?

something about the way turntable presents things makes it a lot more fun.

edit: for perspective, think of it as farmville for music/dj nerds. my dj friends are loving turntable for the 'test out a playlist on a group' factor.

http://www.businessinsider.com/turntablefm-rumored-to-be-rai...

Confirmed: 7.5M at 37.5M valuation.

I'd be very interested in seeing how this played out for the investors in StickyBits.

Wow, I don't even know what Turntable is from their website because I'm Canadian.

I'm from Canada and have used Turntable.fm without tunneling.

Not anymore you don't:

"We're very sorry, but while we would love to let you in and rock out with us, we need to currently restrict turntable access to only the United States due to licensing constraints.

We are working very hard to try and get you in as soon as possible.

If you believe this is a mistake and you are located in the United States, please e-mail help [at sign] turntable dot fm

Again, sorry, and we hope to see you soon.

Billy Chasen CEO"

I'm from the US and don't know what it is because it uses Facebook login. Oh well.

I was in the same boat. Especially since they request the offline data access permission. I finally relented by creating a crap Facebook account. I'd have been happier just giving them my email address and setting up a login in a more traditional manner.

I am talking to one of the tt devs right now, he says it's just a rumor and this article is bogus.

100 days and $100,000 to get a company into beta, a working product that can be released to users for feedback.

In this day and age, do you really need $100,000 to get a company into beta? What are they spending all that money on, apart from a swanky office?

Well, do you need to hire any design or development or bizdev or legal help? Are the founders all willing to work without a paycheck and benefits for 100 days?

$100,000 isn't really very much money.

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