Turntable.fm shuts down
December 6, 2013 2:29 PM Subscribe
Turntable.fm (previously), a virtual DJ room where users streamed music together, has lost the fight (previously) to stay alive and has gone silent. Are other streaming music sites like Spotify and Pandora also in danger?.
Hmm...does this apply to Songza? My wife loves it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:42 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:42 PM on December 6, 2013
There's a Turntable.fm clone called Plug.dj that uses Youtube instead of mp3s. Just FYI.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:45 PM on December 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:45 PM on December 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
We've been hearing that recorded music is on the edge of doom for twenty years now. Either go over the edge or stop complaining. Jesus it gets tiring.
posted by Keith Talent at 2:51 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Keith Talent at 2:51 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
I wanted to like turntable.fm...and created an account only to find out that I couldn't "DJ" unless I had a certain number of points or cred or whatever. On the surface it seemed like something where anyone could sign up and start DJing and then get upvoted or downvoted...social playlisting or whatever...but it wasn't that easy. This limitation was confounding and pretty ridiculous in a world where I can open grooveshark, spotify or youtube and play whatever I want right now.
It was the social component that made it attractive, and the possibility to connect with musically like-minded people...and 'fun I'm a DJ with a huge crowd.' But it wasn't really that at all. Turntable seemed like social music listening and a cool concept but the barriers to entry made it frustrating.
posted by jnnla at 3:04 PM on December 6, 2013
It was the social component that made it attractive, and the possibility to connect with musically like-minded people...and 'fun I'm a DJ with a huge crowd.' But it wasn't really that at all. Turntable seemed like social music listening and a cool concept but the barriers to entry made it frustrating.
posted by jnnla at 3:04 PM on December 6, 2013
I dunno, I remember signing up for turntable.fm and jumping in and djing as soon as I found a cool room.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:05 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:05 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
Not to sound bitter or anything, but I really hope they are all shut down. Watching those services ignore Canada entirely has been frustrating, and America's streaming media paradise loudly being proclaimed to be "the future" (while being mostly unavailable outside the US) is just the icing on the crap cake.
posted by Gin and Comics at 3:14 PM on December 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
posted by Gin and Comics at 3:14 PM on December 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
I used to be an eMusic subscriber until they were forced to change their business model, which is why I predicted Spotify would last until 2014: The music industry has about a five-year attention span for new ideas.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:14 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:14 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
I believe every room on Turntable.fm had their own rules. Some allowed you to get on if there were empty slots, some let you get on with random roles of the dice, some may have required a certain # of points to keep out n00bz. You could always start your own room with your own rules, of course.
I really thought it was a cool service. There was one room called "electronic music for grownups" with the bitchiest possible music snobs who actually played great music. Half of what I bought/downloaded during a period of a couple of months in 2012 was stuff I heard there.
posted by cell divide at 3:23 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
I really thought it was a cool service. There was one room called "electronic music for grownups" with the bitchiest possible music snobs who actually played great music. Half of what I bought/downloaded during a period of a couple of months in 2012 was stuff I heard there.
posted by cell divide at 3:23 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
The soundrop app for spotify does something similar, fwiw. Most rooms let anyone add music and upvote tracks. There's no downvoting, and some rooms are "curated playlists" that don't let you add tracks, but I've found a ton of cool music through soundrop that I otherwise would have never listened to.
posted by reptile at 3:27 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by reptile at 3:27 PM on December 6, 2013
Glad to see Industry Rule #4080 still applies.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 3:58 PM on December 6, 2013 [4 favorites]
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 3:58 PM on December 6, 2013 [4 favorites]
met a ton of great people and producers through TTFM's "Future Garage" room. sad to see it go, but thankfully they've moved to plug :)
posted by raihan_ at 3:59 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by raihan_ at 3:59 PM on December 6, 2013
Gin and Comics: "Not to sound bitter or anything, but I really hope they are all shut down I'm really bitter about the fact that I can't get streaming music in Canada so I don't want anyone else to have it either."
FTFY
posted by Scientist at 4:11 PM on December 6, 2013 [7 favorites]
FTFY
posted by Scientist at 4:11 PM on December 6, 2013 [7 favorites]
.
posted by .kobayashi. at 4:15 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by .kobayashi. at 4:15 PM on December 6, 2013
Not to sound bitter or anything, but I really hope they are all shut down. Watching those services ignore Canada entirely has been frustrating...
Dang, that's bitter, and I say that as a fellow Canadian. US proxies are super cheap and worth it if you like consuming American media online. (It's not Spotify's fault you can't listen to streaming radio!)
Also for what it's worth you can use Plug.DJ in Canada because it just works off of YouTube. Grooveshark is also available in Canada, but its selection is user-generated and so a little shady and poorly labelled at times.
posted by jess at 4:20 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Dang, that's bitter, and I say that as a fellow Canadian. US proxies are super cheap and worth it if you like consuming American media online. (It's not Spotify's fault you can't listen to streaming radio!)
Also for what it's worth you can use Plug.DJ in Canada because it just works off of YouTube. Grooveshark is also available in Canada, but its selection is user-generated and so a little shady and poorly labelled at times.
posted by jess at 4:20 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Gin and Comics: "Not to sound bitter or anything, but I really hope they are all shut down. Watching those services ignore Canada entirely has been frustrating, and America's streaming media paradise loudly being proclaimed to be "the future" (while being mostly unavailable outside the US) is just the icing on the crap cake."
Not to sound bitter or anything, but I really hope Canadian Single Payer Health Care is shut down. Watching that system ignore the US entirely has been frustrating, and Canada's health care paradise loudly being proclaimed to be "the future" (while being mostly unavailable inside the US (despite being available in Canada and every other single first world nation)) is just the icing on the crap cake.
posted by symbioid at 4:21 PM on December 6, 2013 [27 favorites]
Not to sound bitter or anything, but I really hope Canadian Single Payer Health Care is shut down. Watching that system ignore the US entirely has been frustrating, and Canada's health care paradise loudly being proclaimed to be "the future" (while being mostly unavailable inside the US (despite being available in Canada and every other single first world nation)) is just the icing on the crap cake.
posted by symbioid at 4:21 PM on December 6, 2013 [27 favorites]
It was an entertaining idea, and I once worked with some folks where we DJed among the development team. Our tastes really didn't click, though, as they weren't interested in my variations on selections from the Dischord records catalog and rap songs about cars/selling coke, and I could only handle dubstep for like one track at most.
posted by ndfine at 4:21 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by ndfine at 4:21 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
IOW - I didn't know the Tea Party mindset existed in Canada. Also? I doubt Pandora or Spotify will be going away anytime soon - two very different services, AFAICT, no? Wouldn't Grooveshark be more like Turntable?
posted by symbioid at 4:22 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by symbioid at 4:22 PM on December 6, 2013
NOOOOO!
I made a lot of e-friends on that site last year. A room I frequented had a bunch of regulars who would make and upload their own original tracks and it was really great for sharing that sort of thing. Another room had a disco lunch hour that I tuned in and dj'd for regularly. Oh man. I hadn't been on recently but I'm really crushed at this.
posted by ghostbikes at 4:39 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
I made a lot of e-friends on that site last year. A room I frequented had a bunch of regulars who would make and upload their own original tracks and it was really great for sharing that sort of thing. Another room had a disco lunch hour that I tuned in and dj'd for regularly. Oh man. I hadn't been on recently but I'm really crushed at this.
posted by ghostbikes at 4:39 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Also, forgot: .
posted by ghostbikes at 4:41 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by ghostbikes at 4:41 PM on December 6, 2013
Re Songza, I noticed recently that you can't listen to playlists you make. You can only make them and send them out into the world for other people. You also can't really stream anything you want -- if you search for an artist, you'll get playlists that feature said artist (and you can't browse within a playlist to get to what you want).
I'm wondering if, by taking the "listen to anything, anytime" angle out of it, Songza is protecting themselves from what's happening to Turntable.fm?
posted by Sara C. at 4:48 PM on December 6, 2013
I'm wondering if, by taking the "listen to anything, anytime" angle out of it, Songza is protecting themselves from what's happening to Turntable.fm?
posted by Sara C. at 4:48 PM on December 6, 2013
Not to sound bitter or anything, but I really hope they are all shut down. Watching those services ignore Canada entirely has been frustrating, and America's streaming media paradise loudly being proclaimed to be "the future" (while being mostly unavailable outside the US) is just the icing on the crap cake.
Your bitterness is toward the wrong group. All of the streaming services would be happy to have Canada. But the problem is the music industry. They want more money than the streaming services can deal with.
And Spotify isn't even an American company. Europe had it forever (in Internet time) before it came to the US. Canada will get streaming once the record companies realize it is a way to sell product and not a threat. It is only a threat to the old timey way of business.
posted by birdherder at 4:50 PM on December 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
Your bitterness is toward the wrong group. All of the streaming services would be happy to have Canada. But the problem is the music industry. They want more money than the streaming services can deal with.
And Spotify isn't even an American company. Europe had it forever (in Internet time) before it came to the US. Canada will get streaming once the record companies realize it is a way to sell product and not a threat. It is only a threat to the old timey way of business.
posted by birdherder at 4:50 PM on December 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
WHOIS turntable.fm
Organisation: turntable.fm, inc
P.O. Box 1506
New York, NY 10013
And there we have Rule 1 of Internet businesses: If you're doing anything that might invite legal action, you'd better be operating outside the US (cf. fate of Megaupload, Silk Road, etc vs. PirateBay).
posted by crapmatic at 6:01 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Organisation: turntable.fm, inc
P.O. Box 1506
New York, NY 10013
And there we have Rule 1 of Internet businesses: If you're doing anything that might invite legal action, you'd better be operating outside the US (cf. fate of Megaupload, Silk Road, etc vs. PirateBay).
posted by crapmatic at 6:01 PM on December 6, 2013 [1 favorite]
Turntable worked from Canada via a VPN.
I really liked Turntable it was a good place to listen to new songs and to hang out with friends who don't live nearby. It was also a really well built website. I've been using it for a while now and I don't think it was very well monetized or advertised. Its really sad to see another website that worked really well for what it did die.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 6:05 PM on December 6, 2013
I really liked Turntable it was a good place to listen to new songs and to hang out with friends who don't live nearby. It was also a really well built website. I've been using it for a while now and I don't think it was very well monetized or advertised. Its really sad to see another website that worked really well for what it did die.
posted by SpaceWarp13 at 6:05 PM on December 6, 2013
And there we have Rule 1 of Internet businesses: If you're doing anything that might invite legal action, you'd better be operating outside the US (cf. fate of Megaupload, Silk Road, etc vs. PirateBay).
My understanding is that turntable.fm did everything completely above-board and legal, paying royalties like any other radio station. The problem wasn't legalities, it was profitability.
posted by muddgirl at 6:46 PM on December 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
My understanding is that turntable.fm did everything completely above-board and legal, paying royalties like any other radio station. The problem wasn't legalities, it was profitability.
posted by muddgirl at 6:46 PM on December 6, 2013 [3 favorites]
..and here's the blog post where they talk about shuttering the dj service to focus their money on Turntable Live
posted by muddgirl at 6:48 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by muddgirl at 6:48 PM on December 6, 2013
IOW - I didn't know the Tea Party mindset existed in Canada.
Shitty thing to say about Gin and Comics based on that one comment!
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 8:47 PM on December 6, 2013
Shitty thing to say about Gin and Comics based on that one comment!
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 8:47 PM on December 6, 2013
Turntable seemed like good fun, that's a shame.
I'm not fully radicalized against the IP regime yet, but I am drifting over that way. I got a Youtube copyright takedown notice last night, when I clicked on a clip of Bud Powell playing "There Will Never Be Another You". How old is that song? It is from a 1942 20th Century Fox musical, so there you go - at 71, it should be nearing public domain, I think, but it's more likely to become a kind of American songbook Mickey Mouse.
posted by thelonius at 9:00 PM on December 6, 2013
I'm not fully radicalized against the IP regime yet, but I am drifting over that way. I got a Youtube copyright takedown notice last night, when I clicked on a clip of Bud Powell playing "There Will Never Be Another You". How old is that song? It is from a 1942 20th Century Fox musical, so there you go - at 71, it should be nearing public domain, I think, but it's more likely to become a kind of American songbook Mickey Mouse.
posted by thelonius at 9:00 PM on December 6, 2013
I wrote a thing about why Tt shut down and what it meant to me and various other users of the site. I loved it. It worked perfectly and did exactly what it was supposed to do, and I would have paid for it if they made me pay for it, but there you go. God damn the tech industries venture capital dependency and what it's doing to start ups.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:07 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:07 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
I'm not optimistic about Turntable Live, and yes... this is some sour grapes because they effectively killed my little buddy. RIP GUNKY BREWSTER (She was a bot... the first thing that made me want to program in a while. There's something special about a red-headed bot telling people their taste in music is boring, or that they should play the Shaggs, or quoting TS Elliot.)
The site was mostly dubstep and really cheesy indie music, but there were some pretty fun niche rooms with lots of regulars. Of course, they all trailed off but on the last day in my home room (we were having a wake for Gunky) we had 30 people spinning until the end when they switched off the servers. I shed a tear and then jumped over to Plug.Dj to kick off our new room over there. Plug is buggy and we've not really enjoyed it, but we're keeping our punk gunk crew going.
So what killed it? The expense of licensing music? Probably. You could tell everytime they had to change the licensing agreements because a lot of songs in your queue would be removed. The Soundcloud deal recently gave us hope, but it was a hassle. I think a big problem was that it wasn't a passive way of listening. This blog post covers that issue well. Most rooms if you wanted to spin, you had to participate. This is why I thought Piki was good - curated playlists from people I trust, but they shut that down in September. I think despite all that, what really kept me coming back was the energy of hanging out online with people who liked music on terms I understood and appreciated. Pandora, Rdio, Spotify can't do that. (Though my crew is also trying out Soundrop on Spotify, we're desperate.)
There's the new FreeTable project which is exciting and slightly promising. One of the nice things is that the TT guys released the code so die-hards can try to keep the dream alive. Check it out if you want to help.
posted by kendrak at 9:07 PM on December 6, 2013 [4 favorites]
The site was mostly dubstep and really cheesy indie music, but there were some pretty fun niche rooms with lots of regulars. Of course, they all trailed off but on the last day in my home room (we were having a wake for Gunky) we had 30 people spinning until the end when they switched off the servers. I shed a tear and then jumped over to Plug.Dj to kick off our new room over there. Plug is buggy and we've not really enjoyed it, but we're keeping our punk gunk crew going.
So what killed it? The expense of licensing music? Probably. You could tell everytime they had to change the licensing agreements because a lot of songs in your queue would be removed. The Soundcloud deal recently gave us hope, but it was a hassle. I think a big problem was that it wasn't a passive way of listening. This blog post covers that issue well. Most rooms if you wanted to spin, you had to participate. This is why I thought Piki was good - curated playlists from people I trust, but they shut that down in September. I think despite all that, what really kept me coming back was the energy of hanging out online with people who liked music on terms I understood and appreciated. Pandora, Rdio, Spotify can't do that. (Though my crew is also trying out Soundrop on Spotify, we're desperate.)
There's the new FreeTable project which is exciting and slightly promising. One of the nice things is that the TT guys released the code so die-hards can try to keep the dream alive. Check it out if you want to help.
posted by kendrak at 9:07 PM on December 6, 2013 [4 favorites]
I was amazed at the sheer breadth of Turntable's selection- the amount of obscure industrial stuff was amazing.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:12 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:12 PM on December 6, 2013 [2 favorites]
Rdio has been available in Canada for about three years, FWIW. I love it. Hope it's not going away.
On the subject of paying artists, Spotify posted a very interesting piece on their blog recently talking about their payouts and in particular how they are growing. It does appear that some artists are doing very nicely indeed from streaming and are likely to do better in future providing the likes of Spotify & Rdio survive that long.
posted by pascal at 9:36 PM on December 6, 2013
On the subject of paying artists, Spotify posted a very interesting piece on their blog recently talking about their payouts and in particular how they are growing. It does appear that some artists are doing very nicely indeed from streaming and are likely to do better in future providing the likes of Spotify & Rdio survive that long.
posted by pascal at 9:36 PM on December 6, 2013
One of the ugly shifts going on is that as catalogs grow — which is what listeners want — licensing goes up but per song value goes down. That means, yeah, a ton of plays just isn't worth as much as it used to be.
And earbuds killed everyone's ability to appreciate good sound quality, so it's not like there's a huge market for premium product. Vinyl's "coming back," but the number of bands who could survive on their vinyl sales alone is tiny.
posted by klangklangston at 9:42 PM on December 6, 2013
And earbuds killed everyone's ability to appreciate good sound quality, so it's not like there's a huge market for premium product. Vinyl's "coming back," but the number of bands who could survive on their vinyl sales alone is tiny.
posted by klangklangston at 9:42 PM on December 6, 2013
I've started using a Chinese site to create playlists and listen to them online. It will only work within China unless you have a service like Hola turned on. Free, albeit the site is in Chinese and you need to have a membership (free) to save playlists. Surprisingly intuitive after you get the login worked out (I can't even read Chinese).
posted by sarae at 10:01 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by sarae at 10:01 PM on December 6, 2013
Not to sound bitter or anything, but I really hope they are all shut down. Watching those services ignore Canada entirely has been frustrating, and America's streaming media paradise loudly being proclaimed to be "the future" (while being mostly unavailable outside the US) is just the icing on the crap cake.
You can easily tap into and be apart of the steaming paradise through clever use of the internet. I won't tell you how, but 15 seconds of googling (if available in your area) should point you in the right direction.
posted by mattoxic at 10:18 PM on December 6, 2013
You can easily tap into and be apart of the steaming paradise through clever use of the internet. I won't tell you how, but 15 seconds of googling (if available in your area) should point you in the right direction.
posted by mattoxic at 10:18 PM on December 6, 2013
Is Mog in Canada? It's a great service.
posted by professor plum with a rope at 10:57 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by professor plum with a rope at 10:57 PM on December 6, 2013
OH and this means now I will never get to see my dream come true: A cafe/coffee shop that has it's own turntable room playing all the time, where customers can visit the turntable room and take turns djing the music in the cafe.
posted by ghostbikes at 11:12 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by ghostbikes at 11:12 PM on December 6, 2013
maybe the turntable folks should just put all their resources into opening a chain of turntable cafes
posted by ghostbikes at 11:13 PM on December 6, 2013
posted by ghostbikes at 11:13 PM on December 6, 2013
It's not exactly what you want, ghostbikes, but bars that have Touchtune jukeboxes have a search function with access to a shit-ton of music. Costs too much imo, though.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:00 AM on December 7, 2013
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:00 AM on December 7, 2013
Has anyone released an open source version of this software? It seems like the perfect thing to open source... if not, I might start working on this for fun.
posted by yaymukund at 7:00 AM on December 7, 2013
posted by yaymukund at 7:00 AM on December 7, 2013
Burried at the end of my long comment above, Turntable released the code for people. Freetable is one project I know of. Why not help them out?
Oh and there was a bar in Chicago that would use TT as the jukebox of sorts. A couple people with iphones so customers/regulars could spin, and then people like me just goofing off. It was fun remotely.
posted by kendrak at 7:16 AM on December 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Oh and there was a bar in Chicago that would use TT as the jukebox of sorts. A couple people with iphones so customers/regulars could spin, and then people like me just goofing off. It was fun remotely.
posted by kendrak at 7:16 AM on December 7, 2013 [1 favorite]
Oh, and for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure Pandora (still my favorite streaming service, despite or perhaps because of its limitations) is available in Canada. At least, when I set my VPN to come out in Ontario, Pandora still works. If I have it come out in the Netherlands I get a "Not Available in this Region" error, but the Canada servers don't seem to bother it.
posted by Scientist at 10:46 AM on December 7, 2013
posted by Scientist at 10:46 AM on December 7, 2013
I am well aware of how VPNs work, everybody. I shouldn't have to engage with a quasi-legal third-party service to get content I'm willing to pay for.
posted by Gin and Comics at 5:15 PM on December 7, 2013
posted by Gin and Comics at 5:15 PM on December 7, 2013
Pruitt-Igoe: "IOW - I didn't know the Tea Party mindset existed in Canada.
Shitty thing to say about Gin and Comics based on that one comment!"
Not to argue too much about that, but rather my point being that the "fuck you, I ain't got mine, so you shouldn't have yours" attitude (as opposed to "fuck you I got mine"). Like, when I talk to people about, say, drug testing "I have to do it, how come they don't?" instead of "why don't we all NOT get drug tested"... Shit like that. Instead of saying "HEY, WHY DON'T THEY EXPAND!" it was a jealous attitude of "I CAN'T HAVE IT, YOU SHOULDN'T EITHER!"
I realize (or at least, I *hope*) they were being somewhat facetious if not 100% such. It was just a certain mentality that I noticed and made the parallel connection to, as I think it does run rampant in our society/societies. I didn't mean any honest offense with that, rather, just that I think that is the underlying mindset of the Tea Party.
posted by symbioid at 11:48 AM on December 9, 2013
Shitty thing to say about Gin and Comics based on that one comment!"
Not to argue too much about that, but rather my point being that the "fuck you, I ain't got mine, so you shouldn't have yours" attitude (as opposed to "fuck you I got mine"). Like, when I talk to people about, say, drug testing "I have to do it, how come they don't?" instead of "why don't we all NOT get drug tested"... Shit like that. Instead of saying "HEY, WHY DON'T THEY EXPAND!" it was a jealous attitude of "I CAN'T HAVE IT, YOU SHOULDN'T EITHER!"
I realize (or at least, I *hope*) they were being somewhat facetious if not 100% such. It was just a certain mentality that I noticed and made the parallel connection to, as I think it does run rampant in our society/societies. I didn't mean any honest offense with that, rather, just that I think that is the underlying mindset of the Tea Party.
posted by symbioid at 11:48 AM on December 9, 2013
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posted by threeants at 2:40 PM on December 6, 2013