Turntable 2.0 and Passion Pit

The folks at Turntable aren't calling it 2.0, but it sure feels like a massive upgrade to me so that's what I call it when I talk about the new UI and big rooms concept that Turntable quietly launched yesterday without much fanfare.

Full disclosure, USV is an investor in Turntable and I am on the board.

Turntable.fm, for those that don't know, is a live social music experience. Anyone can start a room in the service and a room features up to five users who jump up on stage and take turns DJing, and then the rest of the folks in the room listen, rate the songs, and chat. It is the most social music experience I have ever experienced online. I spend most mornings between 5am and 7am eastern hanging out in Turntable. Like most social online services, I have friends there who I have never met in person. I get better music discovery at Turntable from people I have never met than I get from anywhere else.

It makes sense if you think about it. Folks who are so passionate about music that they get up on stage and DJ live in front of everyone else will also likely have spent countless hours finding music that nobody else knows about yet. That's how music has always worked and how it will always work.

Turntable's achilles heel has always been that the rooms didn't scale. In version 1.0, when a room got to 200 people, it closed up to new entrants. So if you showed up looking to get into your favorite room you could often be out of luck. That is not and never was a good user experience.

Worse is that when a musician, artist, or celebrity showed up in one of the rooms, only 200 of their fans could get in to hear what they were up to. So the whole viral nature of an artist with hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans tweeting out that they are in a room in Turntable was mostly wasted in version 1.0.

All of that has been fixed in Turntable 2.0. The rooms scale up as more users show up. The UI changes in real time. A room starts out feeling like a tiny club and could end up feeling like an arena concert. Here's an example of a "big room" in action:

Turnable big rooms

It's a real work of UI art and kudos go out to Billy and Byron for their work in building the new Turntable UI.

They've also made a bunch of smaller changes, cleaned some things up, moved some things around, speeded it up considerably, and made the service easier to join and get into quickly. I've been watching this new version emerge over the past few months and am so excited as a user to be able to experience it myself now.

If you want to see a big room in action, you can log into Turntable today at 3pm eastern to catch the electropop act Passion Pit playing some of their songs in Turntable. I expect that room will fill up nicely. I am going to try to get in and check it out myself in between running around SF between meetings. I hope to see you there.

#mobile#Music#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. Dave Pinsen

    The first time I tried Turntable I got sucked in for hours, but I haven’t visited or thought about the site in months. Will give it another try having read this post.

    1. fredwilson

      that’s not good. i wonder why it wasn’t sticky for you.

      1. Dave Pinsen

        Could just be the rooms I was in, but one annoyance was pressure from other DJs to like the tracks they played, regardless of whether I actually liked them.

        1. Ben Apple

          Agreed, the active users seem annoyed by the passive users, which makes it hard to go into a room to listen while you’re doing other things- for most people, music is background, its not the focus of what you’re spending your time on.There are moments though when the active participation is fun, and the idea of hanging out with Passion Pit and listening to music is definitely a unique experience they are creating for users.

      2. Mark Zohar

        I’m with Dave. I got sucked in big time when Turntable first came out and haven’t been back (nor want to go back) to the site since. The problem is that the site is “too sticky”. The real-time, synchronous nature of the site combined with the voting pressure and virtual world aspect got to be too much for me. It was too immersive and too demanding of my attention which sapped my energy, enthusiasm and enjoyment after a week of DJ binging.I realized that my preference for music discovery and collaboration is much better served in an asynchronous lean-back model; e.g, exfm, Songza, etc. It gives me everything I need and want in a way that I control, on my own time, with ease and within the rhythm of my day.It’s strange to say this but I fear going back to Turntable like a recovering alcoholic fears going to a cocktail party. Turntable may be the rare case where being “too sticky” may be its downfall.

        1. fredwilson

          stay tuned. more is coming from Billy and the turntable team. they have understood what you are saying for a long time and have been doing something about it.

        2. Richard

          Yep, It definitely has too much zynga overtones.

        3. Donna Brewington White

          Really good points and great analogy. I do love turntable but I’ve had to learn to manage my sociable nature when I’m in there. I generally go in late at night when rooms are relatively small and I am doing work that doesn’t require as much focus. Although sometimes I go in to help me stay awake when I’m working late. I still prefer it to other discovery sites because the others feel more sterile after the personality-rich TTfm.Now that the rooms have larger capacity and I don’t have to worry about taking up the space of someone who might want to be actively involved, it would be nice to have a cloaking feature for the times I want to be anonymous/invisible.

      3. laurie kalmanson

        same: i tried it, spent the morning, didn’t go back. it **is** the best place to find new music curated by obsessed fans since grad school. maybe also offer the lite experience of being able to “subscribe” to a channel, a dj, a room — get lists/updates that can be accessed later to give it a life/involvement not requiring your presence at the exact momentpinterest style “cards” with playlists by genre; subscribe and get them emailed; also, that can be browsedsometimes i want to listensometimes i want to find

      4. Matthew Tendler

        @fredwilson:disqus I’ve had similar experiences with TurnTable. I am, admittedly, a music snob and am more of an active listener. You would think that this platform would be ultra sticky for me. Here are my thoughts on why it has not been:1. Too many barriers to get to my desired outcome (listening to music). I’ll share some Jakob Nielsen knowledge (you definitely know this already but it may be refreshing nonetheless):0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.1.0 second is about the limit for the user’s flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data.10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user’s attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect.The graphics seem kind of bulky and it almost always take me about 15 – 20 seconds once I land on the website to actually hear my first song. Additionally, I get really spotty consistency when I’m not in an ideal wifi area such as 88 Orchard coffeeshop (which is where I am typing this right now).2. Speaking of graphics and UI, I think TurnTable’s design, although very beautiful, tends to make people feel like it is a full-blown experience to participate in turntable.fm. This is more of a subconscious design issue. I’m sure that the “full-blown experience” is something that Turntable may consider a main differentiator but – for the most part – I don’t think it adds too many positives since the primary thing users want to do is just listen to music. I think the UX leaves a lot to be desired (or subtracted from). I also understand that certain features were originally built in order to encourage participation – basic persuasive technology techniques – like bobbing your head, etc. That stuff is fun the first couple times but then loses its ‘cool’ factor.3. Pompous DJ’s. I’ve seen this happen a bunch of times where DJs will “go off” on people. Who the hell wants to be involved in that?4. Make super simple Mobile Apps and a BASIC DESKTOP APP. Reduce the graphics and functionality from within these apps and focus on the key painkiller: “People have a hard time finding new music that they like.”

        1. fredwilson

          Great feedbackThe iOS and android turntable apps are pretty great

          1. Matthew Tendler

            Thanks. Also, if the guys at TurnTable are trying to validate assumptions and prioritize issues then based on the fact that (a) the Passion Pit concert had only 550 people in it, (b) at this very moment only one room has >200 people in it and (c) amazing feedback from this comment thread, I personally believe that increasing the size of a room rather than alleviating much bigger barriers is a mistake. Obviously this wasn’t the only thing they were working on but I’ve felt this awkward relationship with TurnTable for a very long time and the team still hasn’t addressed the biggest, most important issues. If you go through this thread, it seems like a lite version that is less demanding/intimidating is the way to go. I could be completely wrong on this but it seems like there are probably a lot of decisions being made from within the company that are based on continuing to differentiate from platforms like Spotify (mainly the idea of a social network) and the pre-set business model rather than what people really want/need; I get the eery feeling that core functions are not being built because they don’t fit the current mold.

          2. fredwilson

            the passion pit room got to 800. but i hear your points. they are seriously only interested in creating great products for their users right now. all other considerations aren’t front and center right now.

        2. Dave Pinsen

          Re 3., obnoxious DJs are a problem. This may be a unique weakness of Turntable: some of its most zealous users turn off other users. Is this true of any other social medium? There are people I don’t like on Twitter, but none of them keep me from being an active Twitter user.

          1. bsoist

            We still laugh about this one DJ who visited months ago – “why no love bill?” It drove us nuts.

    2. andyswan

      Same here. I think I might not be target demographic though because all I wanted was a place where I was the only DJ and others could listen if they wanted to. Never been into other people’s music.EDIT: Ignore the above I am finding songs today to add to spotify…. I spoke too soon as per usual

    3. falicon

      Mostly the same here…I actually spent the morning I played with it, showing it to one of the college kids on my street (who is really into music) because I wanted to see her reaction to it as well…she was def. interested in it, but had a lot of questions about how to find the right room and if/how her and her friends could get in a private room for the just them (she didn’t care as much about listening to what strangers wanted to introduce to her as she did listening to what just her friends are into).For me personally, my music consumption is mostly a passive experience…I just listen to stuff in the background while I work…I tend to stay away from services where I need a browser or app running in the background of my computer (because my computer is often dedicated to processing stuff and other work — and I often have to restart my browsers [or crash them])…so even though I enjoy the passive turntable experience of some of the rooms, I generally don’t use it and opt for something I can do on my phone, ipod, or ‘other’ device…Speaking of which…does turntable have a mobile version available yet? That might actually be the secret to hooking me (and many of my group)…

      1. fredwilson

        yup. they have really solid apps on ios and android and have had them for the better part of a year now.

        1. falicon

          Shows how out of the loop on music apps I am! Will check it out…thanks. 😉

      2. vatesul

        It does, for Android and iOS.

        1. falicon

          Thanks – I will check them out today.

    4. takingpitches

      Same here.I have been using Spotify passively at work for the last couple of months. I put it on in the morning, pick a few random lists to try, and don’t think of it again. (I really like the ability to add other people’s lists and benefit from their curation. Even at random, it tends to be better than what I am capable of doing.)I’ll try doing the same with Turntable and give it an another try for the same background music use case. I’ll never be the target audience in terms of being one who gets up to DJ, because no one is ever going to look to me for finding music that they have never heard of!

    5. ShanaC

      I have my moments with turntable – mostly when I am in a room and we’re all already listening in a group (hackathon) On a day to day basis, doesn’t interest to me.Though I have to say, doing a virtual concert is a really brilliant idea!

    6. bsoist

      I tried it the first time Fred mentioned it and it didn’t really catch my attention. I tried again later and ended up loving it. I’ve told this story in the comments before, but I became so obsessed with it that I had to restrict my use to Fridays only and I found myself scheduling my Fridays around it. 🙂 The obsession has worn off some so I am breaking my rule a little bit now.

  2. John Revay

    “In version 1.0, when a room got to 200 people, it closed up to new entrants. So if you showed up looking to get into your favorite room you could often be out of luck.”If I recall correctly – at least they had a very creative way of telling you the room was maxed out – something to the effect of the “Fire code” will not permit more people to enter…or something to that effect.

  3. William Mougayar

    Too bad they still aren’t available outside the USA 🙁 Still waiting …and hoping?

    1. fredwilson

      it’s been so damn hard. they have the rights lined up. but now they need to make some changes on their back end. i can assure you and everyone else that they are trying as hard as they can to make it happen.

      1. Jonathan Peterson

        a bigger/fresh audience would be huge

    2. jason wright

      yes, a pity, with passion.

    3. Donna Brewington White

      I can’t wait until some of my friends from other countries can join in — including the friends I have yet to meet through TT. A few slip in — not sure how — mostly Europeans.

  4. andyswan

    turntablin all day name is @swantastic and ready to rock it out with AVC posse

    1. fredwilson

      in what room?

      1. andyswan

        Hip Hop — We got it

        1. Donna Brewington White

          I’ll stop by and check it out. Normally in IWYW or other indie room. There now.

          1. andyswan

            already gone due to PRODUCTIVITY concerns 🙂

          2. fredwilson

            Turntable is a huge productivity drain when you are DJing

          3. andyswan

            feature not a bug from the TT perspective I would imagine.

          4. fredwilson

            Its bothA lot of the comments here and feedback in general tell us that it is too interactive for a mainstream audienceBilly has something up his sleeve to address thatCan’t say more

          5. Steven Jasmin

            I had a similar experience, I got no work done for 3 weeks djing and finally got burnt out. Also a major issue was that the higher profile rooms where very clicky. Took me back to my IRC days in the late 90’s.

          6. Wavelengths

            There for a moment, I thought you were going to a “Productivity” concert. I haven’t heard of them. Are they good? :-)(I’m going back for more coffee now.(

          7. Donna Brewington White

            I noticed. Can relate.

      2. bsoist

        Hair Metal Fridays is not as consistently good as it used to be ( mostly because a wave of Steel Panther and similar), but I still visit every Friday. I missed several weeks right around the time you said you’d check it out. You ever venture in?

  5. kirklove

    Pretty cool. Props to Billy and team for continuing to push forward. This is a great idea.

    1. falicon

      BTW – Whitney’s latest post ( http://smr.absono.us/2012/1… ) turned me onto your recent blogging experiment (one active, current blog post…no blog archive)…would love to hear how long you’ve been trying it and what you’ve been learning/experiencing from it.One of my big arguments for bloggers needing/wanting my search service is that, without it, what’s the point of having an archive…you are the 1st one I’ve heard of that actually ditched the archive concept (for the record, I think it’s a bad idea for many reasons, but I am fascinated by the experiment and *really* want to learn from it)

      1. kirklove

        Hey Kevin,Whit’s a great guy. And thanks for checking out my blog. It’s definitely an experiment, but one I’m enjoying. I think there is a balance between archiving and not archiving and I haven’t found it. I readily admit my experiment is extreme. Still, I believe it’s the right direction and we are seeing a small push toward the “slow web” and I’m firmly in that camp. Even if that camp is really, really small.Would love to talk more as my next venture is exploring precisely this balance of content and minimal archiving. The simple explanation is I see online as like a locker (just like in high school). You only had so much space to put things on the door. New band, new girlfriend, new sport comes along, the old one had to come down. I like that concept. I can grok it, digest it and not feel overwhelmed by it. Might be just me, but I don’t think I’m alone in that regard.

        1. falicon

          I can grok that world too…and actually agree on some level.I think what you are getting at is a collection of the things that are actually relevant and of interest to you at the moment…there is something super interesting there for sure.The trick is not lose the value or memories lock box…since it’s all digital, and *can* be stored somewhere I think there is a strong case for having it accessible…one for your own use case of dipping back in to relive a moment in time, and two for those that come after you and want to take a dive into either a past version of you or take some time to grok the history or evolution of your thinking/history…Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about this sort of stuff forever now (my cry around social for the last handful of years has been ‘over time is *way* more important than real time’ — my latest take on site search is really just another exploration into that thinking).We should grab a beer (or wine or whatever your favorite poison is) and chat sometime soon!

          1. kirklove

            “I think what you are getting at is a collection of the things that are actually relevant and of interest to you at the moment”It’s precisely that. You nailed it and are almost describing my idea to a tee. We should definitely grab a beer (my preferred beverage) and chat. I’m away for bit, but open early December. Let’s set something up.Apologies Fred for hijacking this thread a bit.

          2. falicon

            just assume that we hijacked this conversation while listening to turntable.fm music kicking in the background…and it’s all good! 😉

          3. fredwilson

            Hijack away. That’s the point!

          4. Donna Brewington White

            Thanks for this.

        2. ShanaC

          So what happened to all of those music posts – I used to just que them up and listen. Isn’t their value in that?

          1. kirklove

            Yes, music is a bit different, which is why I still use my Tumblr for that. Plenty of good stuff there (I think) – kirklove.tumblr.com

        3. Donna Brewington White

          Just caught wind that you are starting a “next venture” thanks to a FW reblog on Tumblr. All the best with that.

          1. kirklove

            Thanks Donna!

  6. Abdallah Al-Hakim

    I have never tried it but am intrigued. I live in Canada so will probably have to wait a bit longer. On a related note, I have been getting more into exfm and the experience has been great!

  7. Lucas Dailey

    I think it’s a big improvement, but they really need to become more meritocratic to survive. Here’s a short blog post I wrote about them vs. Songza. http://happyemergency.tumbl

    1. fredwilson

      i read that post. songza and pandora are awesome. but they aren’t social. there are three kinds of online music services. radio – pandora and songza. library – spotify, itunes, rdio, rhapsody. social – turntable, music blogs, tumblr, ex.fm, 8tracks. comparing one to the other has never made sense to me

      1. Lucas Dailey

        True, but the TT conversion funnel still starts with providing that radio experience for most users, no? The social makes it richer and stickier, but the vast majority of users in a room (I’d guess 80% in IWYW where I hang) aren’t chatting or even voting, they just use it for the music curation/discovery. Some of that 80% *will* down vote a particularly bad song, which means they’re active interaction is only a negative experience which would be much more unlikely to happen on a more curation-focused product like songza.I do see your point but I’m skeptical of anything that relies on social to be better than a competitor. IMO, for most people for social to be really robust it needs a critical mass of each user’s actual friends. Otherwise the process of making new friends virtually is just too fragile without a best-in-class reason to be there in the first place.

        1. fredwilson

          There are real people programming the streams in turntable and they are doing in real timeMany of our best investments rely on social (ie real people) to differentiate their services from competitorsI just believe people are better at programming music than machines

          1. Jonathan Peterson

            The biggest, best TT rooms are really good, but there aren’t that many of them. And it’s unlikely that any of the smaller rooms can make that leap – given the combination of external website, custom bot, audience that makes those bigger rooms work. TT needs to have mechanisms to guide new listeners to quality content, potential DJs to a good experience and existing rooms and DJs to bigger audiences. As much as I like TT, I don’t listen to it passively very often at all – I go to songza or spotify for that.

          2. Lucas Dailey

            I couldn’t agree more. It’s one reason I think songza is so good, it’s playlists are all curated by professional DJs and updated regularly.

          3. fredwilson

            I agree with you on Songza. Its terrific. My music mainstays areRadio: songza and last.fm my library radioLibrary: rdio and soundcloud for long tail and pre-releaseSocial: turntable, tumblr/ex.fmAnd then there is YouTube which is the largest music service in the world by a long shot

      2. ShanaC

        ex.fm I love because it doesn;t need to be social to be useful. The more social I get, the more useful it gets (though I need to find some good music listeners who don’t listen to lots of rap)

  8. Jonathan Peterson

    I’ve been using TT regularly almost since the launch.Scalability on rooms is a good thing for it’s growth as a CONSUMER music site. But the changes DO NOTHING to make the experience for people who use it to DJ.TT had a lot of hype and promise, but their failure to fix glaring holes in the feature set or communicate about development plans is the reason that they’ve lost so much momentum. Even the superusers who used to pass information pretty freely have mostly disappeared. Almost all the rooms that I’ve been active in are just shadows of themselves – though very tellingly, most of them have very active facebook pages.Popular rooms have home-rolled bots that add features that are pretty well required to manage a good room, BUT those have absolutely zero support from TT.The fanning function is great – but there is no way to find facebook or twitter contacts in TT, or even search for DJs by name – you HAVE to be in the same room with someone to fan them. What a crippling failure.As for DJing, there is no song transitions, volume management or beat matching and song queue management has ALWAYS sucked. It is simply impossible to manage a queue of more than a hundred songs or so – which means anyone interested in spinning old/rare/new/remix/live stuff that isn’t in the current catalog is quickly frustrated. What’s worse, a couple months ago, changes in the underlying codebase broke every one of the browser extensions that had been developed to make these problems better. That community of developers is GONE – they’ve wasted their time, why would they come back?

    1. fredwilson

      i just traded emails with Billy today on this. lots of good feedback coming from the mods and DJs who are, of course, the most important users. i think you’ll see the team react well to the feedback that is coming in yesterday and today

      1. Jonathan Peterson

        I think the frustration that many have had is a great indication of just what a great product space they’re in. Love and hate are opposite sides of the same coin. The alt-80s room that I tend to spin in is 90% college radio or club DJs. I did both, so this is music I know INSIDE-OUT and I’ve found great new bands, old regional acts, etc.But I’m not the average music listener, a lot of people just want to put on a top-40 station from decade X. That’s a bigger audience, but very different from a music exploration/active DJ core.

    2. Kent Corbell

      I’ve been a regular user for months – and usually DJ. I like bringing new music to share. What’s missing for me is a TT plug-in that allows me to easily grab music from other sites and services and automatically add to my queue.Also, TT needs some queue management. The ability to sort by genre, last played, when and where a song was added, etc.

    3. ShanaC

      what sort of bots?

  9. Richard

    K.I.S.B. Too many rules.

  10. Richard

    Nice job Fred. Great alternative to the pandora “loop”. Can’t say I love the choice of house music type Graphics, might want it to be a function of the music.

  11. danny k

    I think turntable is one of the best social listening experiences online. However, it’s too demanding on my attention and my cpu. I run an ancient macbook. What do the creators think about a super lite version…I mean really basic…search, text description, # in room count, and stream to the devise. I like funny animation just as much as the next guy, but if I’m working and listening, driving and listening, relaxing and listening, it does no good.I’d say let developers get a hold of the room feed and see what variations are spawned.

  12. johnny

    turntable.fm is so dead. take your losses and run.

    1. fredwilson

      Not so fast. This is a great team who has built a great product that people love. There is so much you can do with that.

    2. jason wright

      ah, a critic. appreciate what you have, in all things.

  13. Clyde F. Smith

    So how many people can be in a room? Some media outlets say they just add overflow rooms so that the audience is separated.

    1. Stephen Duncan Jr

      Yes, only 200 people will be in the same room seeing & chatting with each other. But an unlimited number of people can hear what the DJs play via these overflow rooms, and can apparently see chat messages from the DJs as well.

      1. Clyde F. Smith

        Thanks!

    2. fredwilson

      That’s not exactly right. A room can fill up to very large numbers now. But chat is limited to a smaller group because chat doesn’t scale well

      1. Clyde F. Smith

        So they don’t have friends looking for friends? Or can they direct message?

        1. fredwilson

          You can always DM. And there is a way to create a “room within a room” if you want to chat with your friends

          1. Clyde F. Smith

            Thanks for the info. Large group chat settings are an interesting problem. I was just taking a MOOC and I stopped going to the general forum cause there were a couple of thousand people in the class and just an overwhelming mass of messages. The teacher could organize small groups or groups could organize themselves but some kind of filtering process would be helpful as an option in these situations.

  14. Stephen Duncan Jr

    I use Turntable nearly every weekday, hanging out in a small room with eclectic music choices ( http://turntable.fm/mixxxs_… ). I’ve contributed software development to the bot that manages our room ( http://botcavalry.com/ ), I’ve made bookmarklets for picking random songs from your queue ( http://www.stephenduncanjr…. ), and met up with people that I met on Turntable. For me it’s less a music service and more of a virtual community. I know that Turntable.fm is a lot of different things to different people and different rooms, and it’s hard to please us all. But I do get frustrated by what I see as lack of engaged communication between Turntable.fm and its users.It seems to be run very traditionally. Changes always have to come as surprises, even though when those changes break bots or browser extensions, it kills the user experience for those relying on them until the developer community can catch up (if they are still interested in actively developing for a moving target). The blog is very marketing focused. The only noticeable feedback mechanisms are private feedback via the UI. For what is basically a social network, they don’t seem to have really embraced the supposed new social world where you break down barriers and engage with your users.

    1. fredwilson

      That is a valid criticism and I have shared it with Billy. I think they can and will do better on this front

      1. Stephen Duncan Jr

        That’s good to hear. As you can see, I’m a very dedicated user; I feel like I must be almost as invested in Turntable’s success as they are. 🙂

  15. JMathews

    I can’t say I agree that the achilles heel of turntable has been room scaling. There are a lot of issues. And that’s a minor one. Most of the time there are barely 500 people in all the rooms *combined* – a quarter of that late at night. And most of them are zombies or bots anyhow. If they’ve upgraded the servers to be more reliable, great. But the new turntable looks like more of a simple reskinning than anything else. And now… all rooms are held in a giant venue – which is exacerbating the hole empty feeling in all rooms other than DJ Woos!

    1. Stephen Duncan Jr

      Yeah, I mean, I can see how being able to scale up the most popular rooms, as well as being able to support some really big events might help them attract people, as a user of a small room, this update doesn’t really do anything to address my concerns. I hope that they won’t let a focus on growth lead them to ignore the smaller-scale concerns. Retention has to be nearly as important as bringing in new eyes & ears, right?

  16. raycote

    My experience in Canada is still unchanged under turntable 2.0. I still get the same old: We’re very sorry, but while we would love to let you in and rock out with us, we need to currently restrict turntable access to only the United States due to licensing constraints.We are working very hard to try and get you in as soon as possible.If you believe this is a mistake and you are located in the United States, please e-mail help [at sign] turntable dot fmAgain, sorry, and we hope to see you soon.Billy ChasenCEO

  17. Chuck Cohn

    I started using TurnTable a year ago based on Fred’s AVC recommendation and probably spend 10 hours a day on it now. A big group of folks within our company (we all work remotely from home) all hang out in the MashUp room during the day while we work. For a remote company to be able to “hang out” together and listen to music is a really cool experience that makes everyone feel more connected. It’s up there with constant Skype video chats in terms of making our disparate workforce feel like a team (and like friends). Plus I hear ridiculously good mashups by the artists who created them themselves. Love the new UI! Nice work Turntable.

    1. fredwilson

      That mashup room is great

    2. Donna Brewington White

      Remote team hangout — what a cool use!

    3. Richard

      10 hours! That’s more than stickiness, that’s superglue.

      1. Chuck Cohn

        I just keep it up all day long … I can’t work without music on. Once I turn off the music, the work stops.

  18. BillMcNeely

    Just watched A Day in the Life ?estLove on Hulu Originals http://www.hulu.com/watch/3… Tht guy carries around 65,000 songs every days! Maybe you could have him over.

  19. jason wright

    “We’re very sorry, but while we would love to let you in and rock out with us, we need to currently restrict turntable access to only the United States due to licensing constraints.We are working very hard to try and get you in as soon as possible.If you believe this is a mistake and you are located in the United States, please e-mail help [at sign] turntable dot fmAgain, sorry, and we hope to see you soon.Billy ChasenCEO”This is most likely to give a copycat Euro startup the breathing space it needs to leave turntable spinning on its heels.

  20. whitneymcn

    Turntable’s a tough one for me: I want to like it, but it’s just never clicked.I have the usual problem of DJ-ing requiring too much attention, but that hasn’t felt like the main problem for me.Because I don’t have a social group on TT I pick rooms pretty much arbitrarily, and that listening experience hasn’t struck me as substantially different from what I get listening to my Hypem or exfm feeds. In a lot of cases the experience feels a little worse, because on Hypem or exfm I’ve already “vetted” the sources for the music and I get fewer clunkers tossed into the mix (“clunkers” being a subjective term, of course).I could probably find a community within TT, but then I’d be shifting back towards the attention issue: showing up in a Turntable room with familiar people and then ignoring them completely feels like it would be…well, a little anti-social.This update seems to make a lot of sense for the business, and I’ll give TT another shot, but it doesn’t seem like this round of changes is going to make too much of a difference to my experience as a user.

    1. Donna Brewington White

      I have to admit that forming some semblance of community on TT has made a huge difference. Harder to create this in huge rooms. Since I am generally on late at night and early morning, this has been easier to do– but even still I’ve fanned about 50 people and vice versa.

    2. fredwilson

      I hear you Whit. But the live element is real and tangible for me. Those a real live human beings up on stage

      1. whitneymcn

        True, but I don’t feel like you get the artistry of a really good DJ in the listening experience (part that it’s multiple people taking turns, part technical limitations), so it doesn’t make much of a difference to me whether it’s someone selecting songs in real time vs. over the course of days for a playlist.

  21. ShanaC

    !!!!! Passion Pit !!!!!!!

  22. Brandon Burns

    What was the reason for keeping rooms at 200 max in the first place? Tech reasons? Perceived intimacy of experience? Oversight? This seems like a “duh” and I’m glad its been fixed, because its probably the single biggest reason why I stopped using the service, but I’m curious as to why it took so long to change this… and what the reasoning was for sticking with the old way for so long.

    1. fredwilson

      A number of those were factors

      1. Brandon Burns

        as is usually the case…

      2. Wavelengths

        Yet another of those deep, dark VC secrets revealed. 😉

  23. mekalav

    Waiting for turntable to open in UK

  24. unlisted

    Glad to see a fresh design.

  25. Donna Brewington White

    So I admit it — I’m a die hard turntable.fm fan.No other music site feeds my indie music craving like TT — the selection seems fresher than other places I’ve visited. I’ve made some friends there, but I feel the flexibility either to be quiet or to interact. However, I do feel some pressure to vote on songs when I’m in a small room or someone I know is DJing.And I have to admit, I like the ability to DJ — helping create the experience.Too early to comment on the new version. Overall, I think I like it, except losing the chrome extension. Even though the rooms have more capacity, right at this moment I am in a room with 11 people including DJs — and my normal room (IWYW) is just over the normal number for this time of day.I read at least one comment about feeling the pressure to find music to share. I started out on TT as someone “least likely to DJ” and was DJing within my first few times. I do find and upload music to play there but most of the time I’m doing the TT version of “reblogging” — playing things I’ve heard other people play.

    1. fredwilson

      Ganking a song and then playing it later is the move in turntable. I do it all the time

  26. Rizzle

    I tried Turntable for about a week. I found a room I liked and tried DJing once. One evening, a moderator kicked everyone out of the room and banned us, even the people who weren’t playing. There is no way to remove the ban and at that point, I wasn’t invested enough in the site so I gave up and went back to Pandora/Youtube for on demand.Additionally, having “autobop” rooms or disallowing negative votes on songs seems counterproductive to the social experience. Each room having different, long rules makes it confusing if you like to go to a variety of rooms and room banning happens too frequently if you don’t automatically know rules (you disliked a song? ban).

  27. Ethan Bauley

    I am thrilled to see all this feedback from the music nerd/DJ users — I pretty much agree with everything here so far.One feature that would be a real time saver would be the ability to import iTunes playlists into your queue. I’m sure it’s possible, iTunes has an “export playlist” option that’s pretty easy to use. Would be a huge convenience for all the folks that have playlists built for iTunes and their various digital DJ rigs (e.g. Traktor, et al).In general, I just need to go on the record saying that Turntable is one of my favorite services ever and I am really thrilled to see that they are still working hard on improving it. There’s nothing else like it…if they can keep walking down the path they’re on and keep the marketing channels alive, I think it will be really successful in time. These latest changes are a really strong signal that they have the right vision.Said differently, consider this my “opt in” to your uberfan marketing ambassador program ;-)All the best!Ethan

  28. Joe Lazarus

    I’m listening in the Passion Pit room now. First time in a while that I’ve stopped by Turntable.fm. I was addicted to their site for a few weeks, then dropped off. Not sure why. Looks like they haven’t had much of an audience lately… at least according to Compete.com. I wonder why that is. I agree that Turntable is the best social experience I’ve seen for music.For me personally, I loved being in a room with close friends from around the world, but it was always a pain trying to coordinate that among a group of friends. The real-time nature of the experience is what makes it great, but also what makes it difficult to enjoy with close contacts who all have different schedules during the day.As an aside, I always thought that a Turntable.fm for video would be cool… particularly in the living room. I love the idea of sitting back and watching themed sets of YouTube & Vimeo clips programmed by other people as one steady stream from my couch.

    1. Richard

      Room is full, is there a velvet rope for virtual jam rooms too.

    2. fredwilson

      kicking out 2/3 of your users because the music industry doesn’t have a global rights system was and still is a huge issue for turntable. they will get them back but its a huge pain in the ass and takes forever.

  29. Steven Sacks

    The two guys from Passion Pit that are playing live on turntable.fm right now have stated in the chat multiple times that they are playing from the UK. This means that they’re using a proxy to bypass the copyright restrictions that are in place to prevent people from outside the US from accessing the site.Proxies in and of themselves aren’t illegal, but using a proxy to bypass US copyright law is, and turntable.fm’s big concert today is made possible only by the company being an active partner in knowingly breaking the law. It’s an interesting situation, to say the least.

  30. RudyC

    Hello Fred,As you may remember I started showing you a website that we have been working on for a while. I realize now it wasn’t anywhere near ready. I think TurntableFM as some have said there is something there. The problem I think with this kind of venue is since your entering into ‘entertainment’ people expect and want a finished product. Much like a nightclub in real life, it has to have something there to want to go back.While I don’t agree with the methodology turntable uses I do think the lucky part is that most Americans esp. younger ones haven’t heard of turntable. That gives another chance to impress and start over again. Websites such as BI are not going to give you those people. Those people are hard to attract BUT they bring the following.I still say for now, Turntable is still the ‘man to beat’ as “Shakers” is nothing short of a disaster with a ton on money. When we test marketed PSH we found that 85% of the people that registered with us came from Latin countries…good luck…I’ll go check it out..rudy

  31. jason wright

    would routing through a proxy server be a workaround for people outside the US?

    1. fredwilson

      Yes. But it slows things down and can be flaky

  32. markslater

    awesome – i was worried that their time had come and gone – gonna check it out again now.

    1. fredwilson

      They are far from dead and gone. They have more than this 2.0 version up their sleeve

      1. markslater

        great to hear. some investments are more marathon less sprint. i imagine its easy to look through one lens over the other too often.

  33. David Lin

    I have never tried turntable but it seems I should at least give it a shot. It’s a new channel for DJ’ing, so I guess why not.

  34. Jeff Crews

    I love the new upgrades to Turntable.fm. I’m a little disappointed I missed this room (since I’m a huge Passion Pit fan), but am excited to see Turntable’s continued success. It was just the other day – that I had to be a “DJ” for some of our lead programmers (so they could “code away” on some new features).

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  37. fredwilson

    that is a great question Paul. i wonder that myself. turntable is the only investment we have that plays license fees to the labels and publishers. and it may be the only one we make until that issue is settled.

  38. ShanaC

    Doesn’t this speak more to problems facing how to monetize as more and more people leave behind their own connections.

  39. ShanaC

    oof, collections. Damn you autocorrect!