'You’d try to react to the song before you, and that was always so fun.' For long stretches on the highway, they’d 'load up the iPod with the maximum 50 gigs of music, then pass it around in the car, and everyone would add a song ,' he remembers, with a nostalgic twinkle in his voice. In 2011, Adam Downey, co-founder of the avant-garde label Northern Spy Records, was feeling nostalgic for the road trips he'd taken with college buddies in the early 00s. The site developed an especially fervent following among independent music makers and aficionados. Turntable simply brought both of those concepts online for the first time.' 'They also love going to concerts and meeting people. 'People love sharing music with friends and seeing their reaction to new songs,' Turntable co-founder Billy Chasen said. One indie label was reportedly using a Turntable room to audition unsigned bands. Ashton Kutcher, Jimmy Fallon, and the managers for Lady Gaga and Madonna came aboard as enthusiastic financial backers. The site rapidly generated excitement among the hyper-plugged in, quickly raising $7 million in funding and earning a $37 million valuation. Prefiguring the streaming ecosystem to come, gatherings were often tailored to genre, situation, or vibe popular rooms documented by The New York Times one July afternoon included 'Indie While You Work' and 'Endless Bar Mitzvah.' Room members could thumbs up and down picks, and a moderator might boot a DJ from the decks for playing too many duds or RickRolling the crowd. Chatboxes buzzed with ebullient discussion sprouting from the music playing and pure online energy. Even an antediluvian Mark Zuckerberg popped into the 'Coding Soundtrack' room at one point. Room members, represented onscreen by cartoon avatars, might consist of a few real-life friends, Tumblr acquaintances, thousands of complete strangers, or even cyber-friendly celebrities like Diplo, Neil Gaiman, and Sir-Mix-a-Lot. Still, the story of the site's rise and fall could be read as a cautionary tale about the longevity of these virtual nightlife alternatives, especially once the novelty wears off and we're able to congregate in public again.įor a brief period, though, the novelty of Turntable was part of the appeal. After racing to 360,000 users in its first three months, it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, in what fans lamented as the end of a whirlwind chapter in online listening and what seemed like a sign that humans ultimately favored real-life social interaction around music to interacting online.Īs quarantine drags on with no clear end-date, the nostalgia for Turntable.fm may hint at what could be a new normal.

Turntable was a website that let users hang out and DJ in virtual rooms, chatting as they took turns selecting music and listening to others’ choices. It seems almost quaint now, but to web-savvy music-lovers and the extremely online, Turntable.fm was the most exciting development of summer 2011 this side of WU LYF. 'I am prepared for my virtual ambient dj set.' 'We need turntable.fm to return in these trying times,' the reissue label Light in the Attic posted. I really wish turntable.fm was still a thing for us to enjoy as a remote workforce,' wrote one production designer at Square. 'My whole company has started working from home.

The people once again wanted Turntable.fm. Scores of people suddenly longed to cram into a room packed with friends and strangers to bob their animated teddy-bear heads together to a cooperative playlist of surprises and favorite tracks-all without leaving their homes. But at the start of this apparent streaming surge earlier this Spring, flickers of a return to the early 2010s appeared-and not just in the return of a global financial crisis.

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