I can't seem to get the service to work. The page loads but I get a blank screen. Oh well.
Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
21–30 of 36 posts
Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#22Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#23Mostly, turntable is growing because they are subsidizing free music. The social is gravy, but people love free stuff. At some point they will need to actually cover their costs (note the shutdown of non-us traffic) and it's going to be a lot more difficult. Growth has never been the hard part for music startups. Making money has.
There are hundreds of ways to get free music that haven't had the same explosive growth rate as turntable. I think the article is right in that they've done very well with subtle but surprisingly deep social aspects.
I do think they have a huge legal problem looming, especially with regards to letting you play tracks others have uploaded. Google and Amazon are already fighting the 'public performance of copyrighted works' issue, and turntable is far more blatant.
Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#24They've just (last hour) restricted to "US only". Big shame, loved the service from here in the UK.
For all you Lawers and Biz-Dev people who keep crying for a developer to help them do their next 'web hit'. How about taking your skills and trying to find a way to bring media (music/video) to the 6 billion people who do live outside of the US ? Now that would be a real startup !
It's not binary, the choice isn't "US or everywhere else". It's getting one country at a time, and the US is, arguably, a better place to start with.
Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#25Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#26Even with the restrictions in place I think Turntable is still in questionable territory as regards licensing. The "non-interactive" claim they seem to be making (at least, that's the way the linked article puts it) probably won't hold up in court.
Which is a shame, because I really love the service and it just has to be driving loads of traffic through the affiliate links to iTMS and Spotify. Hopefully one of these days the RIAA will wake up to the possibility of alternate revenue streams and realize how valuable discovery services like Turntable are. Until then, I'll use Turntable until it gets shut down, and then I'll jump to whomever springs up to replace it.
Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#27False alarm? I'm in the busiest room on Turntable.fm right now and there's 15 people in here. Maybe 200 total using it right now. Looks like the US-only restriction isn't working out too well.
Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#28Mostly, turntable is growing because they are subsidizing free music. The social is gravy, but people love free stuff. At some point they will need to actually cover their costs (note the shutdown of non-us traffic) and it's going to be a lot more difficult. Growth has never been the hard part for music startups. Making money has.
Like @noisebleed I'll have to disagree. It's extremely easy to find any of the tracks people play on Turntable simply by doing a Google search, not to mention other sites like Grooveshark.
The reason turntable is popular is due to the social elements, specifically vanity. You're on a stage in front of an audience getting points for how sick your tracks are. It's a basic human emotion that is triggered that makes the site so popular. The discovery aspect is great as well but I don't think it's as important to the sites success.
Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#29For all the talk about web-based streaming music services as 'discovery', it's odd to note this fixation on "labels". Is there any reason why a service like this couldn't cater to "unsigned" or "non-label" music? This would arguably help "discovery" far more than Arcade Fire fans getting together to spin another AF track.
Re: Why Turntable.fm is the most exciting social service of the year
#30For all the talk about web-based streaming music services as 'discovery', it's odd to note this fixation on "labels". Is there any reason why a service like this couldn't cater to "unsigned" or "non-label" music? This would arguably help "discovery" far more than Arcade Fire fans getting together to spin another AF track.
I used to spend a lot of time on t61 which does exactly what you're talking about. http://www.thesixtyone.com/
I stopped using it when they did the big redesign. I find the new interface nowhere near as good or useful as the old one but I guess if you started using the site today it would probably seem fine to you.