Internet Innovations to Impact Music Lovers

There’s a hot new club that’s creating a buzz and it is right here on the Internet. Turntable.fm is an online social DJ’ing platform that allows members to discover new music, create custom playlists, and share it with other users in real time. Once inside, Turntable.fm users select cartoon avatars then enter one of many virtual listening rooms where up to five people at a time take turns playing their favourite songs for the crowd. Those in the room can type to chat with one another or click to give songs an “awesome” or “lame” vote. It gets even more interactive as DJs who please the crowd can earn points that can then be used to get better looking avatars and cooler turntables. But if they fail to please the audience they run the risk of being kicked from the room. The brains behind this innovative idea are entrepreneurs Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein who had been working on a company called Stickybits that was focused on cellphone-scannable bar-code stickers. That venture never took off with the public. Their new product is another story. The partners are now talking to venture capital firms and are close to wrapping up a deal for $6 million to $7 million in financing for Turntable.fm. Although the site is still very small and cannot be tracked by Web analytics firms like comScore, it has been visited by celebrities such as science-fiction author Neil Gaiman, producer Diplo, rappers Sir-Mix-a-Lot and Talib Kweli, and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In the past few weeks the owners of the site have been able to use Facebook sign in to attract more than 336,000 users to Turntable.fm. This website is restricted to users in the US, Canada and Britain because its music provider, MediaNet, only has rights to provide the songs to these countries. They have also implemented strategies to control traffic so in order for someone to join they need to be friends on Facebook with a current member. Turntable.fm is a great opportunity for aspiring DJs to get good practice at pleasing a crowd. In addition, some smaller record labels are looking at this fast-growing music service as a new way to find talent and get feedback on their bands. We can only hope it is available in Jamaica soon.