Rolling.fm: Yeah, We Copied Turntable.fm, But We’re Taking It to the Next Level

They admit to copying some parts of it, not to totally copy it. Why are you putting words in his mouth? And copying is so overrated these days. By that I mean people forget that's how companies compete in the same space. They copy features from other and improve on them, or take the product in a different direction, and that's exactly what the founder of rolling.fm said he's doing.

If each and every company had to do something 100% original, there wouldn't be a Pepsi to Coca-Cola. They didn't copy the exact formula of Coca-Cola, but I'm sure the author of Rolling.fm didn't copy the source code of turntable.fm either. He just made it similar enough to compete in the same space, but also different enough to be compelling over turntable.fm. And that's how companies compete with each other in every industry or market. And that's how progress happens and technologies evolve.

People seem to be making such a big deal out of copying these days, because of all the patent lawsuits, which don't really allow you to do that. And that's another reason why the patent system is so broken. It doesn't take into account how business works in the real world.

Missing part of the title: "...But We’re Taking It to the Next Level"

And there's no "totally" in the original title.

This editorializing seems to imply that there's something wrong with competing with an existing business and trying to beat them at their own game, which there is not.

Somewhat off-topic, but I'd like an explanation for why startups are requiring facebook in order to sign up for a service? I'd love to try turntable.fm (as well as rolling.fm, and mixapp.com), but I'm not on facebook nor do I ever plan to be.

Is there some advantage to doing this that I'm not seeing? I understand the appeal of a limited beta and exclusivity, but I would think it would be to their advantage to offer multiple ways to sign up.

I haven't used Rolling.fm yet but a few design elements stuck out immediately:

- The look and feel is really like Apple vs. Android with the avatars and overall aesthetic bearing resemblence to MSN Messenger. - On Rolling.fm, the avatars face left and right whereas on Turntable, you see the back of the heads emulating the feel/atmosphere of going to a live show. This little detail made a big difference to me and gave me the impression that the Turntable folks have more of a focus on the music experience.

I think the Rolling.fm site looks more like an avatar chat site with neat music features. If someone took the same concept and instead streamed videos on Netflix, that would be super interesting too since it would be like entering a "matinee" type of show and people can room chat like on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

To be fair, this isn't exactly uncommon in the history of business.

If I remember correctly, in Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship, this exact phenomenon is discussed as a counterpoint to the first-mover advantage. It is often easier to let someone else do the hard work of verifying that the market for a particular class of product exists. Once you've seen what went well for them and what didn't, you can learn from their successes and mistakes and use that data to one-up them.

From the perspective of Turntable.fm, it isn't necessarily bad news either. If your product is successful enough to inspire someone to compete with you, it might just be a positive indicator of the viability of the market you are trying to serve.

I wish either of these services would let users mix via line in or mic in so DJs could free form their tracks and mixing style. This, coupled with a 5-10 minute per room restriction on mix length, could really take the performance possibilities on these sites to the next level. Right now all you can do is use the site as a shared iTunes which is kind of disappointing for those fond of regular DJ performances.

This is interesting in the context of all of the patent discussions that have been happening lately. Is Turntable.fm a patentable invention? Should it be?

I haven't used it myself and I don't have a fixed opinion on the matter. On the surface it appears to be both non-obvious and novel (no prior art).

Sad to see it making the same mistakes as turntable.fm, such as the facebook logins only thing.

Business is business, and competition's inevitable -- but that said, I can't see myself talking openly around this team in the future. Given their track record, who's to say they won't try to do the same with something of mine?

Competition in itself is definitely not news worthy.

I was hoping for something that dropped the whole stupid "dancing avatar" concept. I don't want to watch cookie-cutter people bob their heads, I want a human-generated playlist that takes up as few cycles as possible.