I have been testing a new music service that, as a former DJ, immediately caught my eye because of the name. One big reason Turntable.fm is so great is that it includes nearly every song in the world, literally. The service’s impressive catalog already includes more than 11 million tracks from MediaNet and if you can’t find what you’re looking for there, you can upload any MP3 from your computer, for real. And let me tell you, at this moment in time, people are simply flooding into Turntable.fm. The service has occasionally had to put the brakes on new invites, but it would appear you can still get in if you’re Facebook friends with someone who uses it. Additionally, Turntable.fm says it plays by the rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by complying with any copyright holder’s request to remove content from its catalog, which should cover whatever music its users wants to play, although that DMCA take-down approach doesn’t always work. No surprise there...
There’s also the sticky and often far-too-expensive matter of paying for all that music. Turntable.fm appears to be covered by the DMCA’s non-interactive rules. That makes licensing affordable enough for a company like, say, Pandora to remain in business, although Turntable.fm might violate at least the part of the DMCA about honoring user requests. That's because as of this date, if you’re a DJ in a small room on Turntable.fm, you can “request” a song and hear it in under an hour. In this past month it has, without a doubt, become the most "chatted up" development in digital music. By one unofficial count, there are more than 140,000 people on Turntable.fm to DJ or listen to what someone else is playing.
To those who regularly read this blog I say, this is social music, the actual thing as opposed to the buzzword. And out of all the social music apps we’ve seen so far, Turntable.fm demonstrates most clearly the allure of such services. It's funky-as-hell design immediately evokes a place where people listen socially, together as one, unlike the time-delayed social experience of sharing Pandora stations or YouTube videos on Facebook. One problem with these crowds is that in a full room, you can no longer see the needle move when you designate something as Lame or Awesome, giving the impression that one’s vote doesn’t matter. Yes Virginia, there actually is a "coolness meter".
Billy Chasen, whose company, Stickybits, created Turntable.fm in part by using investments in its business of making barcode stickers, was recently asked what he thinks about this massive expansion of his new music destination. Surprise of surprises, he’s not talking about that and furthermore, he also declined to address Turntable.fm’s business plan but while Chasen wouldn’t speak to Turntable.fm’s future plans, it definitely has a few options: It can implement ads; let marketers sponsor branded listening rooms; charge a monthly subscription; and/or charge for points currently earned by DJs for pleasing audiences. Regardless of which way it goes, some people are going to be upset about it, because we like to get free stuff (why wouldn’t we?) and can be annoyed when ads show up where they didn’t used to appear. Turntable has other scalability issues — like how to fight spam in the chat feed, currently non-existent, and how to keep its servers running smoothly as hundreds of thousands or millions of new users find out about the service. That’s going to be even harder if it has no money coming in.
Then there is the 800 pound gorilla in the room named Facebook. Let's see how it all plays out but, in my opinion, this is moving the game forward, big time. What do you think? Have you been sucked into Turntable.fm yet and if so, what was you experience like? Please feel free to email me with your thoughts as I always enjoy your feedback.
