Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rarecoil 1842 days ago
The old turntable.fm was basically a chatroom in which people would take turns queueing songs for the entire room to listen to and talk about. You could like or dislike the song playing as well. If enough people downvoted the song it would be skipped.

It was pretty magical in summer 2011; I made real-life friends on TTFM and I learned about a ton of music I had never been previously exposed to. I was disappointed when it died because it really was a lot of fun.

2 comments

I built and host an open source project that sounds very similar, but instead uses Spotify Connect to play via any spotify device:

http://www.soundbounce.org/

I have seen a bunch of these lately as I was researching another alternative to Turtable.fm. Turns out more than half my friends don’t have Spotify so I can’t use it with them. The genius of the old TT was that it (a) had very cute avatars and UX in general and (b) it didn’t require you to pay for a separate service. I wouldn’t mind paying myself that allowed me a certain sized “room” but the moment everyone else must sign up for an external service, let alone a paid one, it becomes a non-starter.
I don't know TT's interface but perhaps https://github.com/calzoneman/sync which can pull media from Youtube, Soundcloud, Twitch, Vimeo, etc.
That’s the problem, isn’t it. The 2011 Turntable was free, but couldn’t monetize it, so it shut down. Commercial music needs to be paid for somehow.
Then charge me as the organizer fir a room of a certain size. But don’t make every one of my guests pay. I am ok creating a virtual DJ space for me and my 30 closest friends. I’m less ok with every one of them having to open up their wallets to sign up for their own subscription even if the amount of money in total is the same.
It was unfortunate they were before the times where music labels did deals with innovative businesses.

TikTok licenses all their music to allow them to freely use the IP in their experience.