9 ms·

Call it a comeback: Turntable.fm raises $7.5M

98 points by jbredeche 5y ago

pkdpic_y9k 5y ago
How common is this sort of re-launch?
snypher 5y ago
>we can continue to innovate and truly explore the cross section of social + music Does anyone know what this website(?) does? It's invite-only and seems to be music related but the article doesn't really say much about what the company does. Edit: After some more research it seems like sharing music with your friends in a common space, like Clubhouse but with everyone listening to a song.
- rarecoil 5y ago
  The old turntable.fm was basically a chatroom in which people would take turns queueing songs for the entire room to listen to and talk about. You could like or dislike the song playing as well. If enough people downvoted the song it would be skipped. It was pretty magical in summer 2011; I made real-life friends on TTFM and I learned about a ton of music I had never been previously exposed to. I was disappointed when it died because it really was a lot of fun.
  - ec109685 5y ago
    It was unfortunate they were before the times where music labels did deals with innovative businesses. TikTok licenses all their music to allow them to freely use the IP in their experience.
  - pdaddyo 5y ago
    I built and host an open source project that sounds very similar, but instead uses Spotify Connect to play via any spotify device: http://www.soundbounce.org/ http://www.soundbounce.org/
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      I have seen a bunch of these lately as I was researching another alternative to Turtable.fm. Turns out more than half my friends don’t have Spotify so I can’t use it with them. The genius of the old TT was that it (a) had very cute avatars and UX in general and (b) it didn’t require you to pay for a separate service. I wouldn’t mind paying myself that allowed me a certain sized “room” but the moment everyone else must sign up for an external service, let alone a paid one, it becomes a non-starter.
      - krallja 5y ago
        That’s the problem, isn’t it. The 2011 Turntable was free, but couldn’t monetize it, so it shut down. Commercial music needs to be paid for somehow.
        IgorPartola 5y ago
        Then charge me as the organizer fir a room of a certain size. But don’t make every one of my guests pay. I am ok creating a virtual DJ space for me and my 30 closest friends. I’m less ok with every one of them having to open up their wallets to sign up for their own subscription even if the amount of money in total is the same.
      - crtasm 5y ago
        I don't know TT's interface but perhaps https://github.com/calzoneman/sync https://github.com/calzoneman/sync which can pull media from Youtube, Soundcloud, Twitch, Vimeo, etc.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > like Clubhouse but with everyone listening to a song I really hope they didn't have to make that pitch to the VCs.
- ollien 5y ago
  btw, it's not invite only. The password is just "speakeasy" and was to limit the initial flood of people.
dehrmann 5y ago
I wish them the best of luck, but I suspect that in the age of TikTok and personalized playlists, Turntable's time has passed.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It's not an either / or though, there is room for multiple things.
- yoshyosh 5y ago
  I personally felt this experience recently with it's revival. I have a group that was quite active 10 years ago and we got back together for a few weeks once the platform revived. Unfortunately the room died out soon after. For me personally it was just easier to use Spotify due to built up playlists, mobile app, discovery weekly etc. I also felt a lot of pressure needing to be the DJ, rebuilding my playlist (some songs not available in certain countries) and always upvoting songs to not get kicked off stage. I hope they can continue to innovate in the space and carve out more sticky use cases. The landscape/competition is vastly different today
- throwkeep 5y ago
  Yea, may be niche. There's still a fun aspect to the DJ part, but is there much value for the audience? Do the DJs add anything beyond what a personalized playlist that Apple or Spotify serves up?
shalmanese 5y ago
One thing I'm surprised doesn't exist yet is "podcast radio stations". Like, I want a podcast DJ to cue up 24 hours worth of programming into a channel and then I can tune in at any time and hear whatever podcast episode is on right now. Don't make me think, don't make me go out and discover new podcasts, just give me a stream of interesting audio content.
- celim307 5y ago
  What genre? BBC and trance around the world, or even monstercat are similar to what you’re looking for. Indie radio stations do the same and usually have a podcast “episode” per week with curated content
  - shalmanese 5y ago
    I'm not talking about brand new content, I want a platform where anyone can sign up and create a "channel" and then queue up a playlist of already existing podcast episodes to play in sequence and I can browse through and hop into different channels and be fed a diet of podcasts previously unfamiliar to me.
    - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure you can create and share playlists of podcasts on spotify, so there's that.
- rmason 5y ago
  There are already people doing something similar on ClubHouse right now. You can interact with a live audience and fund requests. I think you could also host political talk radio on there if they'd let you do it. Actually I think that may be ClubHouse's future - if it survives.
- JBorrow 5y ago
  I hate to be that guy but isn't that just... Radio? Isn't what you've described basically BBC Radio 4, or any of the NPR stations?
soheilpro 5y ago
For anyone who's interested I'm currently building a few social features for Spotify at https://volt.fm https://volt.fm. You can already create a profile and share and compare your stats with your friends. You also get a nice page for your playlists (see https://volt.fm/playlist/x48gzqnr2xoctxu1 https://volt.fm/playlist/x48gzqnr2xoctxu1). I'm now looking for beta testers for the next big feature that lets you share music (and play what's shared with you) right within the Spotify apps. Let me know if you want to join the list.
- matthewh806 5y ago
  Ah yes, the classic "look what I've made that is tangentially related (but not really) to what is being discussed!... please look, pleaaaaaaseeeee" Edit: Alright, looking through your comment history I can see pretty much all of your posts are "shameless plugs" for what you've built
  - soheilpro 5y ago
    I'm really sorry if my post was irrelevant.
- tclancy 5y ago
  It would be good to call out how this is different from Last.fm, which also has the advantage of not being tied to a particular platform.
  - soheilpro 5y ago
    The biggest difference is that volt.fm supports playlists and as I mentioned, the upcoming feed feature for sharing music with a group of people.
phreack 5y ago
Aw, the opportunity to say that they turned the tables was _right there_
niklaslogren 5y ago
Surprised and happy to see this! I was an avid user of the old Turntable.fm which sadly shut down. (I would love to get an invite for the new service if anyone has any ;) ) Related, there is also jqbx.fm which integrates with Spotify which is basically the same thing, can recommend.
- alain_gilbert 5y ago
  “Speakeasy"
spondyl 5y ago
I never used Turntable FM but looking at the cover image for that article: Is that art done by the same person who designed Github's octocat? I can't notice how similar the middle character's face looks to Octocat's face from Github.
- ericwood 5y ago
  He doesn't have them in his portfolio anymore, so I don't have proof, but a friend with no affiliation with Github designed the original avatars.
codeulike 5y ago
Before Turntable.fm there was a small site called "Listening Room" by Abe Fettig https://www.wired.com/2011/06/listening-room/ https://www.wired.com/2011/06/listening-room/ It was in the days when everyone had an mp3 collection - so you create a room with your friends and upload mp3s to a queue. It was very simple without any of the 'party' vibe of Turntable.fm. I had a blast in there with a bunch of people from metafilter and had a go at making something similar. The eclecticness of what people uploaded was fascinating - something that didn't happen in my (admittedly brief) foray into Turntable.fm where it seemed each crowd would aggressively vote-off any track that wasn't bang on some ultra specific genre. But the problem with 'chatroom where you upload your mp3 to a queue' sites like "Listening Room" was the licencing (even though you could try and make the case that its just like playing a record to friends at a party). I looked into licensing something like that as an internet radio station but it didn't work because of the multiple rooms. So I'd love to see a modern version of 'chatroom where you play music to each other' but properly licensed and probably allowing a mix of streaming from spotify and mp3 uploads. Guess its too niche to be worth the licencing hassle.
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
> The team found a clever loophole around music rights in the form of YouTube videos That site already existed as plug.dj, but that shut down in February when they ran out of money. It basically worked the same way as Turntable.fm, except instead of picking a song list or uploading songs, you would search YouTube and queue up YouTube videos. The only limitation was that some YouTube videos are set so that they can't be embedded into other web pages. Songs uploaded to YouTube like this couldn't be played on plug.dj.
- reustle 5y ago
  From my memory, Turntable was the predecessor to Plug.dj. Plug got big once Turntable shut down. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=JP&q=turntable.fm,plug.dj https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=JP&q=t...
- junon 5y ago
  Uh. Plug.dj came after turntable.fm. Turntable was already doing this.
junon 5y ago
Wait a second. There was an old employee that created turntable.com as a competitor which is why Billy brought back the .FM version. Now the .com redirects to .FM. What happened? That site had raised thousands of dollars. What happened to that money? Did they scam people?
- ljlolel 5y ago
  Site is launched and started in 2020: http://tt.fm http://tt.fm and http://beta.tt.fm http://beta.tt.fm This new version is late: https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb Background: http://jperla.medium.com/founding-of-turntable-a69f0d9db34d http://jperla.medium.com/founding-of-turntable-a69f0d9db34d
  - junon 5y ago
    So you never actually had control of turntable.com?
    - ljlolel 5y ago
      tt.fm was the original mobile web domain. Turntable.com was a domain squatter for the past 10 years until this week.
      - junon 5y ago
        But turntable.com pointed to your new endeavor, did it not? I remember going to turntable.com several months ago and it went to what is now tt.fm. Anyway, I hadn't seen those messaged by Billy. I take back what I've said in the past - what a bizarre reaction. I don't really think you should have taken over the branding per se but I see that Billy also wasn't acting in good faith either.
        ljlolel 5y ago
        I polled the OG fans to ask them what to call the all-new website: over 90% said “Turntable” and we had verified the naming rights — so that’s what the fans wanted. Fans decided.
menor 5y ago
Nice,I used to meet with former bandmates to listen to new music discoveries together, and since we moved away from our hometown, we were looking for something like this. Hope to get an invite soon
ljlolel 5y ago
This version is late: https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb
loceng 5y ago
I truly believe we need a system where if you're paying for licensed music on any platform that you're able to play/listen to it anywhere else. Certainly it would take law as a foundation to lead to this functionality. Anyone know any organizations working towards this legally or technically?
ljlolel 5y ago
The original http://tt.fm http://tt.fm already launched before this. You can play music together today. Details: https://jperla.medium.com/i-worked-with-billy-back-in-2011-when-we-co-founded-the-original-turntable-dd5cbc8c0648 https://jperla.medium.com/i-worked-with-billy-back-in-2011-w...
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  I loved the original turntable but that site for sure looks like vaporware and the article is just a drama fest between the original founders. Nope.
  - ljlolel 5y ago
    It’s not — you can play music right now: http://beta.tt.fm http://beta.tt.fm
ny2ko 5y ago
Talk about turning the tables :D
whydoineedthis 5y ago
Totally forgot what Turntable.fm was until I saw the gorilla bouncer on thier home page. I can't believe it was 2013 when that service shut down, that's such a long time ago. I loved turntable.fm while at work, so much chill music was on there. Talk about being "too soon" and ahead of their time. I hope they do well.

98 points by jbredeche 5y ago

How common is this sort of re-launch?

>we can continue to innovate and truly explore the cross section of social + music Does anyone know what this website(?) does? It's invite-only and seems to be music related but the article doesn't really say much about what the company does. Edit: After some more research it seems like sharing music with your friends in a common space, like Clubhouse but with everyone listening to a song.

rarecoil 5y ago
The old turntable.fm was basically a chatroom in which people would take turns queueing songs for the entire room to listen to and talk about. You could like or dislike the song playing as well. If enough people downvoted the song it would be skipped. It was pretty magical in summer 2011; I made real-life friends on TTFM and I learned about a ton of music I had never been previously exposed to. I was disappointed when it died because it really was a lot of fun.
- ec109685 5y ago
  It was unfortunate they were before the times where music labels did deals with innovative businesses. TikTok licenses all their music to allow them to freely use the IP in their experience.
- pdaddyo 5y ago
  I built and host an open source project that sounds very similar, but instead uses Spotify Connect to play via any spotify device: http://www.soundbounce.org/ http://www.soundbounce.org/
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    I have seen a bunch of these lately as I was researching another alternative to Turtable.fm. Turns out more than half my friends don’t have Spotify so I can’t use it with them. The genius of the old TT was that it (a) had very cute avatars and UX in general and (b) it didn’t require you to pay for a separate service. I wouldn’t mind paying myself that allowed me a certain sized “room” but the moment everyone else must sign up for an external service, let alone a paid one, it becomes a non-starter.
    - krallja 5y ago
      That’s the problem, isn’t it. The 2011 Turntable was free, but couldn’t monetize it, so it shut down. Commercial music needs to be paid for somehow.
      - IgorPartola 5y ago
        Then charge me as the organizer fir a room of a certain size. But don’t make every one of my guests pay. I am ok creating a virtual DJ space for me and my 30 closest friends. I’m less ok with every one of them having to open up their wallets to sign up for their own subscription even if the amount of money in total is the same.
    - crtasm 5y ago
      I don't know TT's interface but perhaps https://github.com/calzoneman/sync https://github.com/calzoneman/sync which can pull media from Youtube, Soundcloud, Twitch, Vimeo, etc.
dehrmann 5y ago
> like Clubhouse but with everyone listening to a song I really hope they didn't have to make that pitch to the VCs.
ollien 5y ago
btw, it's not invite only. The password is just "speakeasy" and was to limit the initial flood of people.

dehrmann 5y ago

I wish them the best of luck, but I suspect that in the age of TikTok and personalized playlists, Turntable's time has passed.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It's not an either / or though, there is room for multiple things.
yoshyosh 5y ago
I personally felt this experience recently with it's revival. I have a group that was quite active 10 years ago and we got back together for a few weeks once the platform revived. Unfortunately the room died out soon after. For me personally it was just easier to use Spotify due to built up playlists, mobile app, discovery weekly etc. I also felt a lot of pressure needing to be the DJ, rebuilding my playlist (some songs not available in certain countries) and always upvoting songs to not get kicked off stage. I hope they can continue to innovate in the space and carve out more sticky use cases. The landscape/competition is vastly different today
throwkeep 5y ago
Yea, may be niche. There's still a fun aspect to the DJ part, but is there much value for the audience? Do the DJs add anything beyond what a personalized playlist that Apple or Spotify serves up?

shalmanese 5y ago

One thing I'm surprised doesn't exist yet is "podcast radio stations". Like, I want a podcast DJ to cue up 24 hours worth of programming into a channel and then I can tune in at any time and hear whatever podcast episode is on right now. Don't make me think, don't make me go out and discover new podcasts, just give me a stream of interesting audio content.

celim307 5y ago
What genre? BBC and trance around the world, or even monstercat are similar to what you’re looking for. Indie radio stations do the same and usually have a podcast “episode” per week with curated content
- shalmanese 5y ago
  I'm not talking about brand new content, I want a platform where anyone can sign up and create a "channel" and then queue up a playlist of already existing podcast episodes to play in sequence and I can browse through and hop into different channels and be fed a diet of podcasts previously unfamiliar to me.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure you can create and share playlists of podcasts on spotify, so there's that.
rmason 5y ago
There are already people doing something similar on ClubHouse right now. You can interact with a live audience and fund requests. I think you could also host political talk radio on there if they'd let you do it. Actually I think that may be ClubHouse's future - if it survives.
JBorrow 5y ago
I hate to be that guy but isn't that just... Radio? Isn't what you've described basically BBC Radio 4, or any of the NPR stations?

soheilpro 5y ago

For anyone who's interested I'm currently building a few social features for Spotify at https://volt.fm https://volt.fm. You can already create a profile and share and compare your stats with your friends. You also get a nice page for your playlists (see https://volt.fm/playlist/x48gzqnr2xoctxu1 https://volt.fm/playlist/x48gzqnr2xoctxu1). I'm now looking for beta testers for the next big feature that lets you share music (and play what's shared with you) right within the Spotify apps. Let me know if you want to join the list.

matthewh806 5y ago
Ah yes, the classic "look what I've made that is tangentially related (but not really) to what is being discussed!... please look, pleaaaaaaseeeee" Edit: Alright, looking through your comment history I can see pretty much all of your posts are "shameless plugs" for what you've built
- soheilpro 5y ago
  I'm really sorry if my post was irrelevant.
tclancy 5y ago
It would be good to call out how this is different from Last.fm, which also has the advantage of not being tied to a particular platform.
- soheilpro 5y ago
  The biggest difference is that volt.fm supports playlists and as I mentioned, the upcoming feed feature for sharing music with a group of people.

phreack 5y ago

Aw, the opportunity to say that they turned the tables was _right there_

niklaslogren 5y ago

Surprised and happy to see this! I was an avid user of the old Turntable.fm which sadly shut down. (I would love to get an invite for the new service if anyone has any ;) ) Related, there is also jqbx.fm which integrates with Spotify which is basically the same thing, can recommend.

alain_gilbert 5y ago
“Speakeasy"

spondyl 5y ago

I never used Turntable FM but looking at the cover image for that article: Is that art done by the same person who designed Github's octocat? I can't notice how similar the middle character's face looks to Octocat's face from Github.

ericwood 5y ago
He doesn't have them in his portfolio anymore, so I don't have proof, but a friend with no affiliation with Github designed the original avatars.

codeulike 5y ago

Before Turntable.fm there was a small site called "Listening Room" by Abe Fettig https://www.wired.com/2011/06/listening-room/ https://www.wired.com/2011/06/listening-room/ It was in the days when everyone had an mp3 collection - so you create a room with your friends and upload mp3s to a queue. It was very simple without any of the 'party' vibe of Turntable.fm. I had a blast in there with a bunch of people from metafilter and had a go at making something similar. The eclecticness of what people uploaded was fascinating - something that didn't happen in my (admittedly brief) foray into Turntable.fm where it seemed each crowd would aggressively vote-off any track that wasn't bang on some ultra specific genre. But the problem with 'chatroom where you upload your mp3 to a queue' sites like "Listening Room" was the licencing (even though you could try and make the case that its just like playing a record to friends at a party). I looked into licensing something like that as an internet radio station but it didn't work because of the multiple rooms. So I'd love to see a modern version of 'chatroom where you play music to each other' but properly licensed and probably allowing a mix of streaming from spotify and mp3 uploads. Guess its too niche to be worth the licencing hassle.

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

> The team found a clever loophole around music rights in the form of YouTube videos That site already existed as plug.dj, but that shut down in February when they ran out of money. It basically worked the same way as Turntable.fm, except instead of picking a song list or uploading songs, you would search YouTube and queue up YouTube videos. The only limitation was that some YouTube videos are set so that they can't be embedded into other web pages. Songs uploaded to YouTube like this couldn't be played on plug.dj.

reustle 5y ago
From my memory, Turntable was the predecessor to Plug.dj. Plug got big once Turntable shut down. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=JP&q=turntable.fm,plug.dj https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=JP&q=t...
junon 5y ago
Uh. Plug.dj came after turntable.fm. Turntable was already doing this.

junon 5y ago

Wait a second. There was an old employee that created turntable.com as a competitor which is why Billy brought back the .FM version. Now the .com redirects to .FM. What happened? That site had raised thousands of dollars. What happened to that money? Did they scam people?

ljlolel 5y ago
Site is launched and started in 2020: http://tt.fm http://tt.fm and http://beta.tt.fm http://beta.tt.fm This new version is late: https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb Background: http://jperla.medium.com/founding-of-turntable-a69f0d9db34d http://jperla.medium.com/founding-of-turntable-a69f0d9db34d
- junon 5y ago
  So you never actually had control of turntable.com?
  - ljlolel 5y ago
    tt.fm was the original mobile web domain. Turntable.com was a domain squatter for the past 10 years until this week.
    - junon 5y ago
      But turntable.com pointed to your new endeavor, did it not? I remember going to turntable.com several months ago and it went to what is now tt.fm. Anyway, I hadn't seen those messaged by Billy. I take back what I've said in the past - what a bizarre reaction. I don't really think you should have taken over the branding per se but I see that Billy also wasn't acting in good faith either.
      - ljlolel 5y ago
        I polled the OG fans to ask them what to call the all-new website: over 90% said “Turntable” and we had verified the naming rights — so that’s what the fans wanted. Fans decided.

menor 5y ago

Nice,I used to meet with former bandmates to listen to new music discoveries together, and since we moved away from our hometown, we were looking for something like this. Hope to get an invite soon

ljlolel 5y ago

This version is late: https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb https://link.medium.com/yaBD363QCgb

loceng 5y ago

I truly believe we need a system where if you're paying for licensed music on any platform that you're able to play/listen to it anywhere else. Certainly it would take law as a foundation to lead to this functionality. Anyone know any organizations working towards this legally or technically?

ljlolel 5y ago

The original http://tt.fm http://tt.fm already launched before this. You can play music together today. Details: https://jperla.medium.com/i-worked-with-billy-back-in-2011-when-we-co-founded-the-original-turntable-dd5cbc8c0648 https://jperla.medium.com/i-worked-with-billy-back-in-2011-w...

hallway_monitor 5y ago
I loved the original turntable but that site for sure looks like vaporware and the article is just a drama fest between the original founders. Nope.
- ljlolel 5y ago
  It’s not — you can play music right now: http://beta.tt.fm http://beta.tt.fm

ny2ko 5y ago

Talk about turning the tables :D

whydoineedthis 5y ago

Totally forgot what Turntable.fm was until I saw the gorilla bouncer on thier home page. I can't believe it was 2013 when that service shut down, that's such a long time ago. I loved turntable.fm while at work, so much chill music was on there. Talk about being "too soon" and ahead of their time. I hope they do well.