

Rolling.fm: Yeah, We Copied Turntable.fm, But We’re Taking It to the Next Level - shakes
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/08/08/rolling-fm-yeah-we-copied-turntable-fm-but-were-taking-it-to-the-next-level/

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nextparadigms
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.

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gphil
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.

~~~
ryandvm
I love the tasty irony of this editorializing taking place on a Reddit clone.

~~~
pseudonym
Wasn't Reddit a Digg "clone" in the first place?

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tangothedog
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.

~~~
calbear81
Many people don't want to give out another e-mail or another password to yet
another site. Given the Gawker and other leaked account debacles, many people
use the same login/authentication across web services. By using my Facebook
login, I put more trust in Facebook securing my credentials vs. a startup I
barely know anything about. Plus, it saves me tons of time.

~~~
thomaslangston
The login problem is solved better by OpenId than by Facebook Connect.

~~~
calbear81
Isn't OpenID effetively dead?

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calbear81
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.

~~~
calbear81
I'm going to continue on this since the ideas are coming non-stop:

\- On Turntable.fm, they should make the Avatars and volume level respond to
your rating of the songs. So let's say you think a song is awesome, your
Avatar should move closer to the stage vs. if you don't like a song, you
should move to the back of the room + the volume should get lower until the
next song.

\- Another pivot could be using music as a theme for an avatar based dating
site. Music + Dating has always been a great pair together (think Say Anything
or High Fidelity).

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rpeden
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.

~~~
kwis
Being a fast-follower is often an excellent strategy.

I've long thought that somebody will make a fortune by setting up a company
that clones successful America-centric startups into Europe, Asia and/or
Brazil; using a fast-follower strategy to test core ideas, but then
implementing them in untapped markets.

~~~
bravura
The Samwer brothers in Berlin (European Founders Fund) do exactly that:
<http://www.economist.com/node/21525394>

The have cloned AirBNB (Wimdu), for example. I seem to recall that they had
several large exits by cloning sites like eBay and then selling to the company
they cloned, but I can't find the article right now. In a sense, if an
American company doesn't know how to penetrate a particular international
market, then these clones actually do add value.

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tlack
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.

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MartinCron
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).

~~~
jarek
I'm having difficulty formulating what is patentable about a website that
allows users to create music playlists. What exactly is the invention?

~~~
MartinCron
It's not creating a playlist. It's creating playlists in the context of social
interactions with other (representations of) people, some of whom are also
creating playlists, some of whom are giving you feedback on the playlist.

If the bar is set by Amazon's "buy stuff in one click because we remember how
to sell stuff to you from the last time we sold stuff to you" patent, then
this is in the same ballpark.

~~~
jarek
Well I don't really consider "buy stuff in one click because we remember how
to sell stuff to you from the last time we sold stuff to you" to be deserving
of a patent either but hey...

~~~
ericd
To be fair, I think the sum of Turntable.fm, between the voting, the avatars
in a virtual club with headbobbing, 5 DJs, DJ points, etc is a lot more
complex than the fairly obvious "remember what you entered last time so you
don't have to enter it again" one click buy button.

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

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gyardley
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?

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jsmcgd
Competition in itself is definitely not news worthy.

~~~
flog
Absolutely. I don't quite understand this seemingly common held belief on HN
that first-in somehow means you own an idea?

~~~
ericd
I don't know if you've experienced this, but it is one of the most irritating
things in the world to see something you've put hours of thought into on every
facet of the design copied almost verbatim, doubtless with very little more
thought put into it.

One of the few things that keeps this kind of thing in check is the risk of
being publicly shamed and the associated reputation hit. So that's why this is
here.

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idonthack
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.

~~~
mpobrien
in that case, you might like outloud.fm. the design is barebones and
utilitarian, both twitter and facebook logins are supported, and you can also
play tracks from soundcloud. full disclosure: i built it.

~~~
idonthack
Looks pretty spiffy. Is there any list of public rooms somewhere? One of the
things I liked about turntable was that I could pick through a wide selection
and gate crash the ones that sounded interesting.

