
What Killed Turntable.fm? - rrhoover
http://www.nirandfar.com/2013/03/what-killed-turntable-fm.html
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mintplant
This comes across like the many articles talking about what "killed" Second
Life. The only thing that's "dead" about it is the unsustainable initial burst
of hype; products like this tend to settle into a particular niche and stick
with it. I use both regularly, and both remain active in terms of concurrent
users. Just because it's no longer the media darling doesn't mean it's flat-
out _dead_.

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MatthewPhillips
Investors think differently than you.

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mintplant
What relevance does that have?

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milkshakes
Quite a bit for a company that choses to fund itself by soliciting investment.

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mintplant
Just because a company has lost its media hype doesn't mean it's "dead" yet.

    
    
        > Investors think differently than you.
    

How does this bridge the gap from Fact A to Conclusion B?

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MatthewPhillips
If investors are unhappy with Turntable's decline it won't matter if the
original hype was inflated or not.

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sudonim
I'm in Turntable.fm almost every day. So is my cofounder and so is my
girlfriend. Maybe there's not a strong viral loop going on, but my habit is
formed. Anytime I want to listen to music but have no idea what, I go to
turntable to "Indie while you work" and most of the time, it's great.

Killed is a bit sensational & news to me. As a user of turntable I don't care
about MAUs as long as the tunes keep playing.

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stevenleeg
Same with me (I frequent IWYW as well!). I think Turntable has turned into a
more niche product for people like us. I enjoy interacting with my music, and
actually like the fact that I have to spend extra "brain cycles" on it.

It might not be the runaway success that it once was, but I would definitely
not say Turntable is "dead."

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rektide
From the article: And that was Turntable’s fatal flaw ... the additional
effort involved in using the service.

HAHA. Um, no. I use it while biking, while driving. You can join a channel and
leave it at that.

Turntable isn't going anywhere because the social network designed to support
it, the DJ's that were supposed to be showing up, injecting new life, have
failed to deliver what was needed: interesting music selections that met
diverse genre tastes.

Which, from an entirely different much larger societal dimension does fit with
nirandfar's synopsis: it wasn't that individual users were overtaxed, it's
that the service relies on it's social network to be keeping it fresh, yet the
service was unable to promote sufficient diversity and to keep injecting
different and better enough tunes to keep people coming back.

I'm largely back to smaller shoutcast stations these days, but I probably do a
day and a half a week on average of Turntable.fm listening. The DJ'ing, imo,
has gotten fairly routine, tends to hug some staple pop favorites, which can
sometimes be mitigated with judicious channel flipping, and some times just
feels terminal.

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jsmcallister
When TurnTable first launched, I was on there as a DJ almost every day. That
feeling was flat-out amazing the first time I was "on the stage" in front of a
large audience and everyone enjoyed my song selections. A+ experience.

However, the amount of time needed to curate your playlist and tailor songs
for each crowd was extremely tiresome. It is literally a full-time job to be
on the stage for a few hours. The "in-room" listening experience was not
always great either. Songs were rarely "nexted" and I would find myself
changing rooms more often than not.

Honestly the most enjoyable time I had on TurnTable was in a private room with
5 friends. Just casually listening to the same music while all in different
offices was a great function. Other music services need that.

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jsmcallister
I just went back to check out TurnTable... and it looks like the "power-users"
killed TurnTable. There is a link in the majority of the rooms like the below
telling people what to play and what not to play. Freedom was the essential
ingredient in TurnTable.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApXuMqRDOAn6dDY...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApXuMqRDOAn6dDYyZlBCbERzalBWa1Z2cHphRnNlVUE#gid=0)

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fumar
It does look like most rooms have several rules. As I remember, it became a
norm. Mostly as a reaction from random users getting on the decks and playing
absurd stuff to kill the room's vibe. We could call them trolls.

Edit: I clicked on the spreadsheet. Having a music black list is pretty
extreme. I thought you were referring to room rules; like, only playing five
songs then stepping down or having a list of who is up next.

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r00fus
Re: Trolls - on a meta/tangential note it does seem like "troll management"
(aka moderation) could alternatively be called governance - it's essentially
what keeps libertarian ideas in the fantasy realm - anything involving large
numbers of people undoubtedly requires extensive rules in order to keep things
stable (whether they're explicit rules as in managed systems, or implicit
rules where avoidance of external authorities is what keeps people in line -
ie, torrent culture).

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greenrice
Nothing "killed" Turntable.fm, it's still going strong and has valuable
features that Pandora and Spotify can't supply, such as social involvement and
even music artists/producers themselves play live sets on the site.

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fumar
It stinks T.fm declined rapidly. I was there for the beginning. At the time,
it felt great to participate with music lovers and musicians that shared
similar music tastes. As the user number grew it became harder to participate.
Then, the "left of center" rooms were pushed down to the bottom after American
Dubstep skyrocketed.

It was then when I began to lose interest. In the past, I would spend hours on
T.fm either participating or letting it play in the background. I loved
working on something in Ableton Live then sharing it with a room of people who
might appreciate my work. It has been over 3 months since I last logged in to
T.fm.

One can compare T.fm to Spotify and Pandora, but I never thought it served the
same purpose. I would compare it more to a forum/chatroom. I doubt T.fm could
compete with internet radio. But, I was convinced it would keep flourishing.
To me the rooms where I hung out, became an internet home. I knew the regulars
and their music tastes. It was a place for me to hang out to relax and explore
music.

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rrhoover
I agree to some extent. Turntable is very similar to IRC/chat room; however, I
would posit that most users view Turntable as a destination to listen to
music, directly positioned against Pandora, Spotify, and other music services
within the user's mind.

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nthitz
I'm in the mashup.fm room daily. For me it's invaluable as most other music
streaming services don't have a wide selection of mashups which I enjoy quite
a bit.

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jsmcallister
Top 20 rooms currently on TurnTable:

1) DJ Wooooo's House/Dance/Electro 2) Indie While You Work 3) Ambient Chillout
& Trip Hop 4) mashup.fm 5) Dubstep 6) Trance Out! 7) Coding Soundtrack Lounge
8) #AnonFM 9) Indie Discotheque 10) Chillout Mixer, Ambient & TripHop 11)
ThePhish 12) Hip Hop official 13) Hot Hitz 14) Chill or Be Chilled 15)
WeHaveRobotEars.com Trance 16) Hater Free R&B and HipHop 17) Alt Nation 18)
The Trap Train 19) Electronic Dance Music 20) club meem

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larrywright
So then the answer to "Who killed TurnTable.fm?" is: Skrillex.

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rektide
Skrillex is more like a ghost that hangs around keeping the corpse shambling.

That said, serving well a pop music base is probably what drove away the
cultured, eclectic sound seekers. There ain't much for nuance in the top
channel listings.

That that said, the long tail still sometimes has some amazing yet small
rooms, for those who don't mind the exploratory deep diving.

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hugopeixoto
For me was becoming restricted to the USA. I never DJed, but I let it run for
hours in the background.

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loeschg
I am not productive at all when I use Turntable. Brain cycles are definitely
wasted when I use it.

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reustle
I found plug.dj to be much easier (and most people are moving over from ttfm).
linking YouTube and soundcloud playlists is much easier than uploading mp3s

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sturmeh
It doesn't work outside of USA?

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jonathanjaeger
At first it was open internationally but then they ran into legal issues
because every country has different regulations and record labels, etc. I
don't know all the details, but to avoid it, they shut out international
traffic. Countries like Japan that sprang on to Turntable couldn't use it
anymore.

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jeromeparadis
Which is the reason I stopped playing with it. I'm in Canada. As so many of my
friends from different countries were on it but not from the US, I suppose the
drop may have been quite substantial.

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torbit
Spotify Soundrop

