Turntable.fm

Spotify? Old news...the hottest new music service is Turntable.fm, or TT. It mixes music discovery with rich media. Users exist as their avatars with screen names of their choosing, and play the part of DJ or listener, or quite often, a combination of the two. There is a chat box on the right-hand side of the screen, the conversations and content are visible to all users in a room. All the rooms are user-created and user moderated. The moderator has the ability to remove DJs from the DJ line-up or remove them from the room all together.

When you enter a room, there are five DJ spots that can be filled by any user. If all the DJ spots are filled (or if you’d rather just listen to the music) your avatar simply stands in the room and you listen to the song selections from the five DJs. If you opt to be one of the DJs when there’s an open DJ spot, you access your queue of music and select which song you’d like to play next. No matter what room you are in, each DJ plays one song, then on to the next DJ’s song. So when you’re one of the five DJs in a room, every fifth song will be from the top of your song queue.

Songs can be added to your personal queue in one of two ways: you can upload songs from your computer or you can search the TT database of music and add songs from there. In mid July, Turntable.FM secured rights from ASCAP to stream their catalog of over a million songs. The following day, they completed an agreement with BMI to access their 6.25 million songs. When it comes to song selection, the DJ can choose whatever song he/she wants to play. However, the listeners in the room each have one vote per song, Lame or Awesome. When someone votes awesome on a DJ’s song, that avatar starts dancing and the DJ gains a DJ point. If enough users vote lame on a song, the song gets skipped.