Turntable dunked all other music streaming sites in playlist quality for the simple reason that the intelligence behind song selection resided in humans rather than an algorithm.
It was a specific application of the general idea that social recommendations are more powerful than algorithmic recommendations. I don't know how valid the general idea is, but when it came to Turntable, it worked. People search the space of musical works much more effectively than algorithms.
And then Turntable did nothing with that power. They had high quality playlists being minted by the thousands on a daily basis, and I could not access any of them.
At least for a time, they were focused on live engagement. Unfortunately, it's just too hard to grow a music streaming product that demands each listener be present to click a button for every song. I loved the service, but I also have a job. I cannot be on the site all day long. At the risk of being presumptuous, I would guess that the product leaders were blinded by their devotion to live engagement.
Focusing instead on their brilliant, yet simple, solution to the problem of "What song should go on next?" would have been the right call. But they did not walk this path.
As for their new product, which predictably focuses more intently on the live engagement aspect, I am unconvinced. Turntable Live provides a subset of the functionality that Twitch.tv does, with less reach.
Best of luck to them. No doubt, they are an extremely talented team.
And I'm really, really going to miss Turntable. Kickass idea. (yeah yeah plug.dj, whatever)
FWIW, Grooveshark has a feature called Broadcast that, while not the same thing as Turntable, has the human curated music selection part of the experience. We're also about to release functionality that lets you view past broadcasts, hopefully addressing your main complaint. :) http://grooveshark.com/#!/broadcasts
Full disclosure: I work there!
Oh, they do! We added that functionality a few weeks ago. It's listening only for now, and until a week ago didn't work on older Android (2.3ish), but it's there. :)
the playlists on turntable were an organic composition of the community in the channel. the user was directly involved in the creation process. the playlist changed to reflect the people in the channel. it was an entirely social gathering (when it started anyway), as if you got 50 music heads into a room and asked them to rock out.
songza is purely curated. for that reason, it misses the social aspect. songza is more like hiring an extremely inexpensive dj. other users dont get to interact with the playlist content.
different approaches to the same problem, but i believe the real innovation is in combining humans minds and experiences in searching the song graph. songza does not do that. turntable did.
Glad to see plug.dj exists. I mean, I did work really hard at accumulating my awesome avatar collection on turntable.fm, but I think I'll get over the loss as long as there's somewhere new to go.
As much as I loved the concept of turntable, it was always a music service for me rather than the interactive experience they intended. The best part about it was that other users, not bots or radio station managers, determined the playlist and therefore led to new and interesting tracks. However, the interface didn't really support my usage and hearing familiar tracks became more and more rare as the rooms became more established.
Their decision to focus on virtual events makes sense from a monetization standpoint, and I couldn't agree more with their approach. I do think there's a sweetspot to be had for user-generated radio, as Pandora is too repetitive while Turntable was not repetitive enough.
I don't see this move being popular. They are basically demoting the users from both consumers and curators to just consumers of the music. What made turnable.fm awesome was that it was people like yourself deciding on what everyone wanted to listen; if people didn't like the choices, someone else could be selected. Now that control is out of the equation. The artists are selecting what everyone wants to hear, they are choosing based on what they want you to hear. Don't like the music? All you can do about it now is leave the room. Only time will tell if this is what brings turnable.fm into the spotlight, or sink it down into the depths.
I actually always thought the tt.fm model was a bit broken in that respect. Only five people got to DJ, and there was next to no rotation. I enjoyed using it in a small room with friends, but in a room of any size there was a very low chance that I would ever influence the playlist.
In any case, the simple fact of the matter is that there was no way tt.fm was making money. They have to change.
No salivating VCs, no cutesy avatars, the redesigned site is nice but nothing exceptional, and for some reason I doubt they even consider themselves a "technology company"—but they nail all the important bits. Great acts, frequent events, live audiences provide effective WoM and a sense of exclusivity for those who attend, and perhaps most importantly, everything's available on YouTube[0] and Soundcloud[1] in perpetuity.
Wake me up when anyone else is doing anything half as compelling.
Actually believe this would be a good plan. I listen to live music in Second Life (Don't laugh) and I've found live music works well when streamed live both audio only and video.
For musicians, its great to perform live for people but having to tour and go from gig to gig, lugging equipment around, and most of the time only being paid beer money and travel expenses.
Being able to perform for an audience but not having to leave your doorstep saves you both time and money. You can reach more people worldwide than you can in a small pub holding fifty to a hundred.
I understand people love turntable.fm but the labels have pretty much killed innovation by the licensing so to me it isn't a surprising that streaming companies are having problems.
Maybe the new turntable.fm can be the Twitch.TV of the live music world. Who knows but anything is possible!
I've also enjoyed many a live music performance in Second Life. It's wonderful to be able to text chat with friends, and even with the musician, during shows. (The musician can ignore the text chat if they want, so it's only distracting for them if they want it to be.)
You're right that most SL live musicians broadcast from home studios, which is great because it keeps their costs down. Turntable Live currently says musicians have to come to their NYC studio, which I suppose is better than travelling all over the country, but I'm sure musicians would much prefer performing in a home studio or a studio in their area. Maybe in the future?
Hmmn that sucks then. If you could do it from home, would be so much better. It kinda defeats the purpose then if you have to goto a studio. From home you could just do it on Justin.tv or YouTube but these are for general purposes. If It was a site dedicated to live music where artists could sell merchandise, MP3 etc or collect tips, would be a winner.
Never heard of this site. Thanks for the tip. I'm actually liking this site better already. And as a traveler (in Mexico now), I can actually visit the site without having to use a VPN.
Unfortunately, you can be subject to youtube videos being blocked in just your country (Germany and the US are the countries I've heard the most complaints from on that score).
Turntable.fm was the first site I watched from the very inception of its hype cycle, which appeared white-hot. I had just checked in with them the other day, "yep, still alive," but I hadn't heard zilch about them in years.
This pivot is probably as a result of not sufficiently and consistently marketing the site. Why did they stop? They were white hot when they began, but as they toned down the promotion they were just forgotten. This is a horrible shame because there's still so much potential in this service, especially as they have a community of engaged users that could probably be encouraged to pay for additional stuff and features. It feels like they're so close to having a winner in what they already have going, not what they're planning to go to.
I loved them and have only known about them for about a year. Pip pip cheerio.
I am seriously disappointed by this move. I've been hanging out in a great electro swing room called Boomswing Cabaret, and the music and the people have been awesome.
They only recently set up subscriptions, pay what you want, and made a lot of changes to the service, ie adding music only through soundcloud, which saved them tons on licensing fees.
I'm fairly certain that most of the user base has no intention of moving into the live events.
So, they spent all this time building a brand, gaining users who would be happy to pay a bit each month, and then just let them all go? Isn't the # users part of the product when getting funding and advertising their new live TT?
I guess the move goes on to plug.dj, but it's a pain to try to add all the songs built up in the tt playlists, I can't seem to find a way to import the csv to plug. or soundcloud for that matter.
I'm not really surprised, they didn't exactly have a plan to make money from turntable.fm. I loved the concept, but I find it a bit too distracting to listen to most of the time anyway.
I've really enjoyed turntable and had some great memories jamming with the original turntable at a few hackathons. For me the element of listening to music with people physically around me was the key.
The pivot is interesting and definitely an opportunity there.. but no doubt there is nothing like experiencing music live in person. At least to me the format of the new pivot is too similar to just a listening to a live album.
All the best guys and thanks for some awesome memories!
It looks like Mixify is doing something similar now as well [1], but focusing on booking clubs instead of a bunch of individuals like Turntable. Both seems like a pretty neat concept. I think this will be great for low population areas that artists wouldn't typically go to.
It was a specific application of the general idea that social recommendations are more powerful than algorithmic recommendations. I don't know how valid the general idea is, but when it came to Turntable, it worked. People search the space of musical works much more effectively than algorithms.
And then Turntable did nothing with that power. They had high quality playlists being minted by the thousands on a daily basis, and I could not access any of them.
At least for a time, they were focused on live engagement. Unfortunately, it's just too hard to grow a music streaming product that demands each listener be present to click a button for every song. I loved the service, but I also have a job. I cannot be on the site all day long. At the risk of being presumptuous, I would guess that the product leaders were blinded by their devotion to live engagement.
Focusing instead on their brilliant, yet simple, solution to the problem of "What song should go on next?" would have been the right call. But they did not walk this path.
As for their new product, which predictably focuses more intently on the live engagement aspect, I am unconvinced. Turntable Live provides a subset of the functionality that Twitch.tv does, with less reach.
Best of luck to them. No doubt, they are an extremely talented team.
And I'm really, really going to miss Turntable. Kickass idea. (yeah yeah plug.dj, whatever)