
Turntable.fm Hits 140,000 Users in Its First Month - sahillavingia
http://www.betabeat.com/2011/06/22/how-many-users-does-turntable-fm-have-2011-06-22/
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klochner
I'm still pretty excited about turntable, but not because the music is so
phenomenal.

Turntable is the first web service that gives me the sense of physically
hanging out with friends while online.

I consider chat rooms or IM to be v1.0 of simulating real-time social
interaction on the web, like sitting around a campfire and talking.

But people don't do that very often IRL - they meet at places that have
something interesting going on and chat in a low-intensity way while also
listening to music, watching a show, eating, etc.

Turntable gives a nice integration of passive entertainment, active
participation, and social interaction that makes me feel like I'm hanging out
at a club with friends. I can go see which friends are there & what they're
doing, listen to a little music, or just say hi.

I think that's cool.

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bproper
The music industry would be crazy to nix this. Imagine selling special tracks
exclusively through turntable.fm, branding rooms for DJs and celebs, etc.

Shazam pushes $100 M. in purchases towards iTunes etc each year. Turntable
could blow that away.

But the industry is going to see people uploading DRM free tunes and freak
about not getting enough of a cut.

~~~
antidaily
That kind of vision doesn't exist in the music industry. They shut down
Muxtape. They'll shut down this.

~~~
bproper
And yet they have allowed 8track to exist.

The founders are hoping they can exist under the protections of DMCA streaming
radio.

~~~
citadrianne
The question is whether Turntable will have to make so many compromises with
the labels that the site loses its appeal. You can't skip through something
like more than two songs in a row in 8tracks. You could see how those kinds of
restrictions could potentially ruin the fun of Turntable.

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vyrotek
I was pretty excited when this first came out. I listened to it all night.
But, eventually I felt there was something still uncomfortable about the whole
experience. Some people said it was their new Pandora. I can't say I feel the
same.

I get a little frustrated when I can't find a room playing stuff I want to
hear. And then I get even more frustrated when I give stuff a thumbs-down but
still have to listen to it and hope the next DJ doesn't suck. I feel like I've
been too spoiled by personalized music services. Personally, the chat room
isn't really a valuable feature.

~~~
brown9-2
Seems like it's a lot more fun if you can join rooms with friends or people
whose tastes you know intersect yours

~~~
pavel_lishin
Exactly. When nobody I know is on, I just use Pandora - with a crowded room, I
can't skip a song I hate. And with friends, you get exposed to new music from
trusted sources, and everyone ends up trying to play something that's equally
palatable.

(Unless your friends are jerks and decide to play Tool's LAMC.)

~~~
earbitscom
So excited that you just referenced Tool's LAMC. To thumbs up this comment,
press 1. WEEEEE-SKRUM.

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ChrisLTD
Turntable.fm is a lot of fun. I've been using it with offsite coworkers to
create a sort of shared music space.

Unfortunately, it seems like only a matter of time before it gets shut down by
the RIAA or riddled with enough advertising to make it sickening.

~~~
pitdesi
They use MediaNet for now... totally legal.

It costs them around $.002 per listener of a serendipitous play, and 10 cents
for the DJ (which is an on demand play)... This could get expensive pretty
quickly, so I'd imagine they are negotiating/looking for another source.

Also interesting - to be DMCA compliant, they'll also have to follow other
groundrules, so users:

1) May not see ahead in a playlist past the currently playing song

2) May only play or pause the list

3) Can only play 3 songs per artist per hour, maximum

4) Can only play 4 songs from a single album in three consecutive hours,
maximum

5) May skip ahead only 6 times per hour.

~~~
vyrotek
What about the feature which lets you upload any mp3 you want and play it to
the crowd? A lot of my files don't have the artist information, I don't know
how they plan to pay to play the song.

~~~
rbxbx
I've found it will usually try to match against tracks in their database
(sometimes to my chagrin)

I've never tried a completely untagged file before though... so report back
when you find out?

~~~
flyingyeti
Untagged files are not processed properly by the uploader. You'll get a
"General Upload Error". This also seems to happen when there are multibyte
characters in the ID3 tags.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I've had that error occur several times, and then the file finally made it
through.

It was from a Russian band, tagged with presumably non-ascii characters, but
it finally went through, and I really really doubt they have some of the other
things I've uploaded.

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hucker
Turntable has got me thinking. It seems to me there would be a market for
doing something similar for "real" DJs, where they could stream live sets to
listeners. I know I love to listen to a good electronica DJ when I'm coding or
just chilling, but I can't always take my laptop with me to a live set.
Obviously it could be done with justin.tv or ustream for example, but
something more customized for sound should exist. If it got popular one could
even have a profit-sharing scheme with the DJs like justin.tv has (or is it
ustream?), so not-super-famous DJs could earn some cash on the side.

What do you think? Would anyone ever use a service like this?

~~~
djjose
I've thought about this as well. I used to record my DJ sets with an mp3
player that had line-in. I'd just spin, record, and then upload when I got
home the next day (and even do my podcasts this way on my home gear). An
iPhone app that did the same for name brand DJ's would be excellent. They
could record or even stream to a room of their own (or their label or the
nightclub itself). I'd love to login to the Club Amnesia room and be able to
listen to sets from their Ibiza parties in the last week. The right execution
would totally work for EDM fans I think. I tried something similar with
podcasts: bestdjpodcasts.com but what TT has is much more compelling IMO.

~~~
rdouble
If you don't care about streaming you can use something like fIRE2 from
Audiofile Engineering and upload direct to Soundcloud. There are other similar
products in the app store, and you could probably even use the built in free
"voice memo" app. Streaming live is hard because you generally have no control
over the uplink wifi and 3G is too slow.

~~~
djjose
Interesting, thanks for that! I know lots of DJs are using SoundCloud now, so
maybe a TT-Soundcloud type integration with some branding elements and the
like would do the trick. How great a tool would TT be during say, Armin Van
Buuren's weekly A State of Trance show to interact with his fans in realtime.
I know guys use Twitter now but I feel like Twitter is being forced into being
this tool because this tool doesn't really exist. This would bring some
context to the conversation.

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iqster
I just tried to request site access ... kudos to these guys ... the request
process itself was hilarious! Attention to detail ... that's where it's at.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I have a facebook account, and a friend who was a member, so my process was
mostly just annoying. I guess they didn't want to deal too much with tracking
referrals on their own end, so relegated the process to Facebook?

~~~
teejaygreen
What did you find annoying about it? I clicked to log in, not knowing if a
friend was already a member, but I guess someone was, because a few seconds
later I was in. It was very simple and quick, it didn't annoy me at all.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I find it annoying that I basically have to use Facebook to gain instant
access. To be fair, I have no idea how the alternative login method works, but
apparently you have to wait until they make it through to you in the queue -
so if I invite a friend who doesn't have a Facebook account, I end up
disappointing them.

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johnzimmerman
This looks like a cool site, but I don't have a facebook account and won't
create one for the purpose of logging in to another site.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Someone should write a quick bash script that'll automatically create a
facebook account with random information, specifically for this type of
circumstance.

Obviously it would break the TOS, but it would give you a way of checking out
some Facebook-only services. And if you have anarchist-leaning feelings,
you'll also be sticking it to The Man by adding noise to their signal.

~~~
ladon86
I'm pretty sure you can't create a working Facebook account using a quick bash
script.

~~~
pavel_lishin
The biggest problem I can see is the e-mail verification, but I imagine even
that sort of thing would be scriptable. It's all just squirting characters
over HTTP, right?

~~~
JonnieCache
In theory, yes, but the problem with this kind of complex scraping is that
you're constantly chasing the moving goalposts of facebook's code updates,
which are frequent.

See also: poker bots.

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devindotcom
Isn't the first month, like, the least indicative month, out of ALL the
months? If they have 200,000 next month and a million in a year, we'll talk,
but this site has all the indicators of being a that's-cool-move-on thing.

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pavel_lishin
I'd like to know more information about how people were able to download the
streamed music, and what they did to stop it.

Also, it would be nice if I could automatically scrobble the songs played to
Last.fm.

~~~
bproper
You can Gabe K built a turntable.fm scrobbler -

<http://gabek.github.com/TurntableScrobbler/>

~~~
pavel_lishin
Awesome! Thank you.

I only wish his site wasn't a migrane generator.

~~~
joepestro
Here's another one called Turntable.fm Extended (has a few other features,
like notifications):

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mnciafhfaahhafklck...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mnciafhfaahhafklckmcabbncbgcjpeg)

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tathagatadg
I just discovered it, ... and now I can't stop trolling in the coding
soundtracks room! IRC+music+game-mechanics - no wonder they hit that
usercount!

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WrkInProgress
This might be off-topic, but the guys who created turntable.fm, they are also
the co-founders of Stickybits.

So what's going on ? Are they running both companies or ?

~~~
vyrotek
<http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/08/turntable-addiction/>

_"When Stickybits didn’t take off the way they hoped, Seth Goldstein and Billy
Chasen pitched existing investors ($1.9mm raised) this idea and ran with it."_

~~~
WrkInProgress
So Stickybits is in the dead pool I assume.

Thanks for the info.

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gogobears
Does anyone know a way to get around my work firewall so I can access
Turntable.fm from work?

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trooon
This site is addictive. Love it.

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funkdobiest
Sorry don't use Facebook. Sounds like a toy to real Dj's

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clistctrl
This site is actually pretty cool. 5 different versions of the chicken dance.
I appreciate that.

