Techdirt. Stories about "turntable.fm"

The Advantage Of Copycat Startups: Will Rolling.fm Keep Turntable.fm Innovating?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 4 Aug 2011 07:34:37 PDT

We've written a few times about the wonders of Turntable.fm, one of the first new music services that really seems to get the fact that part of what makes music so enjoyable is the social experience. It's a wonderful service. However, as with anything that gets a lot of users and attention, it isn't long before copycats come along. And, as Eliot van Buskirk has reported, Turntable.fm has a copycat in the form of Rolling.fm, a service that almost certainly chose to copy an awful lot from Turntable.fm. Of course, as with many "copycats," it appears that Rolling.fm has tried to add some features that sound useful, "such as the ability to see who is in a room in one big list, and a private chat feature that lets you speak directly to Facebook friends even if they’re in a different room." But I tend to agree with Eliot in noting that this is not a bad thing:

Who cares? The world needs all the neat ways to listen to music it can get, from where we’re standing. It’s a case of “the more the merrier” — even if Rolling.fm is quite possibly the least original web app we’ve ever seen.
It’s also a case of “different strokes for different folks.”
The Rolling.fm group-listening web app differs from Turntable.fm in that many of the most popular rooms correlate to specific colleges and universities (although anyone can join those rooms). And so far, we’re hearing far clubbier and less indie music than we generally hear on Turntable.fm.
Who knows — we could be just about to witness an explosion of group listening services, each with its own twist on the Turntable.fm concept that will appeal to a different demographic. While Turntable.fm deserves ample credit for coming up with the concept, it can’t really be bad for music fans if that concept continues to be replicated as it has been here…

I'd go even further than that. Copycats like this actually help everyone, including Turntable.fm. Not only does it help spread the concept even further, but Turntable.fm can just as equally learn from the "improvements" a copycat makes. On top of that, this will help keep Turntable.fm on its toes. As much as I love the service, and as much as I understand that it's very much in beta and at times struggles with the amount of usage it gets, the service has been really buggy at times and having some direct competition in the rear view mirror can only act as an incentive to improve as quickly as possible.

Last year, we wrote about Oded Shenkar's excellent book Copycats, which argues, persuasively, that our cultural distaste towards companies that copy one another is misplaced and not very sensible. There are tremendous benefits to be had when two or more companies copy each other, mainly in that it continues to push all players to innovate and to provide better overall offerings. While I haven't been able to test out Rolling.fm yet (it was down when I went to check it out), I think this development is really good news for Turntable.fm and hope that the company is willing to recognize that as well.

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Turntable.fm Showing How Sharing Music Is Communication

Mike Masnick — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:08:00 PDT

We've already talked about just how amazing Turntable.fm is for its users. The key point we made was how it totally makes music social in a way that's incredibly powerful. I noted how much it reminded me of when I was an actual DJ on the radio many years ago, where so much of the fun wasn't just in playing music, but in hanging out with a bunch of friends and playing music together. Others are recognizing this as well. In one of the most splutteringly gushing reviews of the service, ever, Sam Grobart at the NY Times highlights this same key point by noting that sharing music is communication:

It doesn’t matter if you start a room with some nearby cubicle mates or with friends scattered across the globe: what you begin to realize — almost instantly — is that taking turns playing music with friends is a kind of communication. One song leads to another. Music, enjoyable in and of itself, becomes a sort of shorthand when played among people who have shared memories attached to it. Someone plays a song that was popular when you were college, then another friend plays another song from that same period and — just like that — you’ve traveled back in time. It’s like you’re all sharing in the same inside joke.

And this feeling is reflected not just in the choice of songs, but in the comments that friends post. Someone digs a lost hit out of the crates and the message board lights up with comments from friends (O.K., my friends) saying things like “!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and “my head is exploding.”

Using Turntable can even help you make friends with people you only know in passing. If you’re D.J.-ing in a room with co-workers, you may never have realized that you and the guy across the floor both like Afropop. Now you have something new to talk about at the soda machine.

Later, he notes: "When your old college roommate surprises you with that Deee-Lite song the two of you used to rock out to, you know it’s more than just music: it’s a message."

Indeed. After writing my original post on Turntable.fm and how it reminded me of hanging out and DJing with a group of others -- people who I was close friends with at the time, but have mostly lost contact with -- I reached out to many of my former co-DJs to talk about setting up a "reunion" via Turntable.fm. It's hard to use Turntable.fm and not recognize that sharing music is a very legitimate form of communication.

In many ways, it's a further manifestation of a point about culture that Julian Sanchez raised a couple years ago, about how culture is built off of shared cultural experiences. It's the sharing part of culture that makes the culture valuable. If only you experience it, it just doesn't have the same power. Turntable.fm's key reason for being so addictive is that it's one of the first operations, whether on purpose or not, that has effectively taken that key aspect of culture, and turned it into a service.

However, separate from just how Turntable.fm highlights this key point, I think it also helps explain why the legacy recording industry and many politicians have made so many wrong and counterproductive moves concerning dealing with music in the internet era. Rather than realizing that music is communication, they look at it solely as a unit of content. When you view music as a unit of content, even as the fans of music actually view it as a form of communication, you're going to clash. That's because many of the ways that people communicate via music break down the concept of music being a unit of content. And, in the end, that's what a lot of the legal and policy battles have been about over the past couple decades. A very large group of people are communicating with music... and some big legacy players are simply not set up to even comprehend that, let alone cater to it.

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It's The Experience That Makes Music Valuable; Not The Legal Rights

Mike Masnick — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:11:00 PDT

Ethan Kaplan strikes again. The always-thoughtful (and thought-provoking) former recording industry tech exec has put up a blog post that not only explains why Turntable.fm is so popular, but also reframes why the record labels have failed to embrace almost every cool new internet service. You should read the whole thing, but the short version is that users care about the experience, the big labels care about the legal rights. And it's really the experience that makes things valuable. But, if you (like the labels) have bet on the licenses, rather than the experience, then any time someone else makes the experience more valuable, all it does is highlight just how little value there really is in the licenses.

Value in the music business though is an odd thing: the more value added to the music by the fan directly, the less influence the rights holders have over it, and the more influence the creators of representational systems (i.e., turntable.fm) and rights creators have (i.e., artists going directly on turntable.fm with stuff that their labels don’t own). And rights holders do not like being taken out of the value equation.

Call it Kaplan’s Law: the more value a non-music company adds to the fan/artist relationship, the bigger the threat to those who’s business depends on being between the two.

To some extent, this is a (better) rephrasing of a point I tried to make a few years ago, that those who focus on "copyright" as the key to success in any industry are using copyright as a crutch. Rather than building real value and business models that users want, they're using this crutch which provides a simple business model. It makes them lazy, uncreative, uninterested in real user value -- and violently against any sort of innovation that increases value while diminishing the importance of that crutch.

The really interesting points are when you remove that crutch and realize that for a business model to work, it has to provide real value that willingly brings users in. Until the music industry figures this out, they're going to continue to miss the boat on important innovation on both the product side and the business model side.

But artists don't have to miss that boat. As Kaplan suggests, now is the time to focus on the "experience rights," not the "legal rights":

To artists: own your experiential rights. Participate in technology and hold your representatives (lawyers, labels and management companies) to the standards you want your content held to once you lose control of it.

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How Turntable.fm Could Be Even More Awesome... And Make Everyone Money

Marcus Carab — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:29:28 PDT

Recently, I commented on a post about the geo-blocking of turntable.fm, explaining my dream of an alternate universe in which such exciting platforms are embraced, not fought. The trolls can go ahead and lob their various accusations and names at me (I particularly like "lickspittle") because Mike felt the idea needed more exposure, and invited me to turn it into a post. So, with some minor revisions, here is my turntable.fm fantasy:

The site grows. New features appear. Artists and labels embrace it. People like Thom Yorke and Trent Reznor show up on occasion in rooms where they take questions and engage the audience. Fans value this kind of intimate attention greatly, and the rooms quickly fill up with thousands of people, creating a lot of noise. Seeing a chance to monetize, turntable.fm builds a digital ticketing platform for shows with set capacities, so artists can host small intimate gatherings or huge free concerts. Record labels hold exclusive album launch parties on the site, with a full roster of their artists spinning tunes - with only a few hundred tickets available, they sell out fast and can pull impressive prices. Inside these rooms, the labels and artists unveil the first official downloads of the album, plus merchandise and early-sale concert tickets for the launch tour, through the integrated system that supports both list items and auctions.

In public rooms, a prominent but simple marquee scroller on the DJ table - styled to match the unique graphical feel of the site - also advertises merchandise, tickets and digital downloads. It does this automatically through affiliate programs, pulling results from Ticketmaster, Amazon and Bandcamp as artists come up on the queue, and also through a YouTube-like program that allows copyright owners to directly monetize their content and make more unique offerings. Users can opt to receive monthly newsletters with various offers based on the songs they played/liked that month as well.

Because the affiliate program cuts the performing DJ in for a small piece of sales once they reach a certain volume, some ambitious folk even try to make a career out of DJing on the site - and a handful succeed. They boast well over a million followers each, and are constantly courted by promoters to give exposure to new artists (a few sell out, and are rapidly abandoned). Others have used their popularity to promote their original work, converting their DJ-following into fans of their music, and RtB-ing them with Amanda Palmer-esque auctions on the virtual dancefloor.

The site sets the standard for social music, much fun is had, and money is made by all. Oh, and I can fucking use it from Canada.

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That Didn't Take Long: Turntable.fm Blocked To All Non-US Users

Mike Masnick — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:48:33 PDT

Just last week, we wondered how long it would take before the recording industry helped kill off Turntable.fm, which we consider to be one of the best music services we've seen in a long, long time. Apparently, it's not taking very long at all if you're outside the US. We started receiving emails from people all weekend, letting us know that Turntable.fm had officially blocked all non-US users after realizing that its current licensing methodology technically only covers them in the US. The company insists that it's planning to return to other countries "as quickly as possible," but it may discover that's a lot trickier than they expect. After all, Pandora went through the exact same thing, blocking all non-US users over four years ago, promising to return as quickly as possible, but it still hasn't been able to, even now that the company's public and has a giant warchest. Part of the problem is that music licensing agencies throughout the world demand absolutely ridiculous rates from companies like Pandora, and I imagine Turntable.fm will quickly discover the same depressing news.

Of course, in the meantime, those of us in the US can continue to use the service, and folks in foreign countries can get on via proxy servers which aren't too hard to find, but basically the industry's stupid licensing regimes effectively make this very useful service, that helps introduce people to new music, unavailable to most of the world. What a waste.

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How Long Until The RIAA Kills The Best Music Service Around?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:21:08 PDT

Over the past month or so, there has been tremendous buzz about a startup called Turntable.fm. It's been written up in a few places and lots of the usual crew of Silicon Valley folks have been using it. In general, I tend to be skeptical of the "buzzy" startups out there, but over the past couple weeks I've been playing with the service, and have found -- like so many others who use it -- that it's incredibly fun, addictive and amazing (and not great for productivity, at times). A bunch of folks associated with Techdirt have been using it and we've spent almost as much time discussing the legality of the whole thing.

If you haven't used it, it's a service that finally makes music social in a way that works. Basically, you and others go into a "room" which generally has a theme. Up to five people in the room can act as "DJs" and sit at a table in the front. Each of the DJs puts together a queue of songs and when their turn comes around, the next song in their queue plays (usually, it's still a little buggy on that front). Everyone else in the room can hear the song and can vote on whether it's "awesome" or "lame." If it's awesome, the DJ gets points, if it's lame, the song can be cut off and you can get booted from your chair (I believe, though have never seen that happen). Also, all the folks in the room have cute little avatars, and their heads bob to the music if they think it's awesome. When one song is done, it moves on to the next DJ in the row, and on you go: collaborative curated music playlists. It's difficult to explain what makes the whole thing quite so addictive and fun, but for those who get hooked, I keep hearing the same thing about how much fun the whole thing is. I have a few theories on why it's so addictive, though I'm sure different reasons are there for different people. For me, frankly, this actually reminds me of when I used to actually DJ music on the radio (kids: look it up) decades ago. I used to co-DJ a music program, and part of the fun was just sitting around with my fellow DJs talking about all sorts of stuff while figuring out "what should we play next" and listening to great music the whole time. Turntable.fm evinces a nearly identical feeling, which I'd long since forgotten about. So the nostalgia part definitely hits me.

But I think the reason that hits me so hard, and why so many people like Turntable.fm, is the core underlying social aspect of it that so many in the music industry seem to ignore. Music isn't an individual thing. It's always been a social thing. We want others to hear the music we like. We like to share the experience. It's a cultural thing. If only you hear a song, that's one thing, but sharing that great feeling with a friend or others is something else. It's part of the reason why people flock to concerts. But the recording industry has always focused on music as a solitary thing: as in, they want each individual to buy a song or an album and that's it. The social part is an afterthought. Maybe it helps more sales, maybe not. That's not important. It's why so many music services today are kind of boring, frankly. You can listen to music, but that's about it. There's not much social about most of them (with a few exceptions).

Turntable.fm, on purpose or not, brings back that cultural sharing element. It makes just listening to music a party, and that's incredibly addictive. And, as simplistic as the graphics are, something about them completely "works" in this environment. The little bobbing heads are really quite powerful. And, as Marcus Carab said after playing around with the service: if no heads in the audience are bobbing, "IT FEELS HORRIBLE." That's a part of that cultural sharing phenomenon. We all love music, and we love to introduce others to music we love... but many of us still fear that basic feeling of social awkwardness: what if we pass this along, and no one likes it? Turntable.fm does a brilliant job of meshing together all of these elements, and really has made it work.

But is it legal?

Then we come to the big question. If there's one thing we've seen over and over again, it's that the big record labels and the RIAA simply can't stand it when "someone else" figures out how to make music valuable. The standard operating procedure is to claim that whatever they're doing is infringing, and then sue first as a part of a negotiating strategy to get massive license fees or to drive them out of business. Sometimes, as with imeem, they do both (get massive license fees, which serves to drive them out of business).

There were some questions as to whether or not Turntable.fm already had deals with the labels. The way the music works is you can do a search, and if Turntable.fm already has the track you can add it to your queue. If it doesn't, you can also upload it from your personal collection. Various reports note that Turntable.fm has a deal with MediaNet, which allows them to stream a ton of tracks at $0.002 per listener (and 10 cents per DJ, since that's an "on demand" play). It's not clear how it works with uploaded tracks. There are also some limits, as a friend of mine discovered when a bunch of DJs in a room all tried to play songs by a single artist. After a few tracks, you get a message saying you can't for licensing reasons.

That sounded similar to what the (also quite cool) startup 8tracks does, in that people can upload songs and create playlists... but with a few limitations to avoid violating copyright law. There are a few basic rules that have been put in place at the behest of the recording industry to make sure such services aren't really fully interactive (for which they want much higher priced licenses), so limiting tracks by a single artist, limiting tracks from a single album and not letting people see what's upcoming are there.

What is now official is that the company does not have any licensing deals with the labels, relying on the belief that following those streaming rules and the basics of the DMCA make it legal. The issue is whether or not the labels buy that and decide not to sue. That would be the smart move, but think about who we're discussing here. There's a pretty good likelihood that someone will get upset (or, really, jealous of the massive popularity) and decide that they're "not getting the proper cut," and initiate legal action.

That would be a shame. The service really is the sort of thing that the labels should be encouraging. It's an amazing tool for social music discovery. It clearly makes music more valuable. I've been introduced to all sorts of new music via the service, and have since purchased a bunch of CDs (yeah, make fun of me, I'm old fashioned that way) because of it. There's also tremendous user engagement here, not just in picking the songs, but in voting on them and talking in the associated chat room. Still, almost everyone seems to think that the labels will do what they always do and sue. Again, quoting Marcus, "it must be illegal, because it's awesome, and there's simply no way something this awesome would be okay with the RIAA."

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