SpongeOddFan Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Today, Turntable.fm has announced that it will shut down its ‘virtual dj’ product entirely to focus on its new Turntable Live platform, which attempts to replicate the ‘being there’ experience of live performances. TechCrunch broke the news of Turntable.fm’s live event pivot back in September, but today the company has acknowledged that Turntable.fm will be shuttered. The news comes in a blog post by the Turntable team, where it details the efforts to get Turntable.fm, which was beloved by a core group of users, to work on a wider scale. “For over 2 years, we’ve improved and evolved the turntable.fm experience. We made rooms expand to unlimited sizes, made thousands of UI improvements, launched GOLD, built a mini-player, designed tons of avatars and listened to our community, trying to make the experience as wonderful as possible,” says the posting. “Over those two years, the community has played over 400 million songs in about a million rooms.” Unfortunately, those efforts weren’t enough. Comscore numbers in September put Turntable traffic at around 89k uniques. When he spoke to us a couple of months ago, Founder Billy Chasen said that the removal of the ability to upload music was able to save the company about $20k a month. But the posting says that the price of running the music service remained too high. “It was a tough decision to make because we love this community so much, but the cost of running a music service has been too expensive and we can’t outpace it with our efforts to monetize it and cut costs,” says the posting. “If we also want to give Turntable Live a real shot, we need to fully focus on it.” The company says that playlists and songs will be able to be exported via Spotify or CSV file. It’s also making avatars available for everyone, rather than just those who have leveled up. It’s going to work on making ‘anonymous’ raw data dumps of Turntable info available for developers to play with. The company says it will host a live party on Turntable.fm on December 2. Presumably the site will be shut down after that date. Here’s an example of what a Turntable Live performance looks like. I always found Turntable.fm quite cool, but the basic concept had some distinct flaws. Streaming music is often something that people listen to in the background, without the time or inclination to directly participate. Having humans program your stream is kind of neat, but the overhead of hanging out in a special online room to do so ended up not panning out. A live event is another whole bag entirely, as people would theoretically be showing up for a specific reason and hanging out would feel like less of a chore. At least, that’s what Turntable is betting on. We’ll see. In the meantime, come pour one out on Turntable.fm here. Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/turntable-fm-shutting-down-so-company-can-focus-on-turntable-live-events-platform/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MMM Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I should have been on there more. I can't believe it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jjs Goodman Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Even though I haven't cared for turntable in ages, this is saddening news to the fans of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgerpants Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 DANG YOU LAST.FM THE DJ WILL HAVE VENGENCE ON YOU Edit:600th post. Wow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sauce Mama Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Aww I've had such good times there. I'm so bummed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
E.V.I.L. Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 That truly is a shame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClassicNickelodeon Fan 1 Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Very saddening. But don't worry, your songs can live on! If you have Chrome, download Spotify. go here (http://turntable.fm/export), and drag the thing to Spotify and boom, your songs have been saved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Fuck this! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sauce Mama Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Oh guuuuuuys, look what I found... http://plug.dj 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clappy Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I saw the news about this yesterday on Facebook. Would have came to share the news if I had time to. But yeah I am pretty disappointed this is happening. While I like TT, I have to admit when I've read into the history of the domain, TT has made some very crucial mistakes to try and keep up with the times. Spotify wouldn't have gotten as big as it did if TT were determined to keep up with them. But yeah, bottom line, this is still incredibly disappointing. I much prefer TT over Spotify. I love TT. That being said, the shut down kind of doesn't surprise me. I just wasn't expecting it to happen this soon. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elastic Dawg Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Oh guuuuuuys, look what I found... http://plug.dj Ehh, i've used this site before. It's not as good, believe me. This is really sad and aggravating, though. Sad because no more turntable, and aggravating because I somehow doubt Turntable Live is gonna do much better. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OWM Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Goodbye, Turntable.fm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cha Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Could someone please kill me now. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Ehh, i've used this site before. It's not as good, believe me. This is really sad and aggravating, though. Sad because no more turntable, and aggravating because I somehow doubt Turntable Live is gonna do much better. I'm confused with this... can only one person DJ at once? Cuz it looks pretty okay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crushingmayhem Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I only visited a few times but it seemed like a good service. Perhaps we can find another site that proves the same options, the only difference that everyone can visit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elastic Dawg Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I'm confused with this... can only one person DJ at once? Cuz it looks pretty okay. You have to line up to dj. After your turn is up you have to get back on the "waiting list". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doctor Sex Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 I'm gonna miss 2000score 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shin Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 there's also wavelength.fm except i can already imagine deciding songs on there getting uglier than a non-PPV TNA match Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest hilaryfan80 Posted November 24, 2013 Share Posted November 24, 2013 This is upsetting. :/ I got Turntable Gold to help with their costs, but it seems that even that's not enough to help them. How about we have a one last huge SBC Turntable party over Thanksgiving weekend? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpongeOddFan Posted November 24, 2013 Author Share Posted November 24, 2013 This is upsetting. :/ I got Turntable Gold to help with their costs, but it seems that even that's not enough to help them. How about we have a one last huge SBC Turntable party over Thanksgiving weekend? put it on Black Friday instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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