Could Turntable.fm Kill The DJ Once And For All?

Turntable.fm burst into the internet radio game with rave reviews, with some reviewers going as far as to call it the next Twitter. The concept is surprising in that it hasn’t been done before: users create and name rooms based on whatever genres they’d like to hear, and five or so people get to take over spots in the DJ booth, playing whatever music they queue up from an online database. Select good tracks and the audience in the room will give you points, propelling you on your way to internet DJ fame. Play something crappy, and, well, I guess you suffer a bunch of online boos.

Either way, it’s phenomenally simple to start trying to rock the party, and I see how people can call social playlist making the future of listening to music on the internet. Silicon Valley types are going apeshit over it, and despite being more or less invitation only it’s already got 140,000 users. At this point it’s more or less a guaranteed success. But after fiddling around with it for a week and a half, I can’t help but wonder: is this the death spell for DJing?

When I was 17 and got my first set of Technics turntables, a friend’s older brother told me that “You can’t simply play what people want to hear, otherwise they’ll get bored. You have to convince them that what you’re playing is what they want to party to.” And, classic rock and top 40 radio stations aside, he was completely right. Since then, algorithmic music players, internet radio aggregators, and numerous playlist builders have popped up, but none of them have come close to providing the interaction between DJ trying to read crowds and crowds that quickly get pissed off when the music sucks. Turntable.fm tries to replicate that, with the oversized heads of users’avatars bobbing along when they like a track. But ultimately it fails. Both sides are too isolated and too anonymous.

This meter is how you tell if the crowd hates you or not. It’s a little more gentle than flying beer cans.

DJing with vinyl was (and is) a big undertaking. Between spending years digging for records to build a good library, lugging back-breaking crates around, memorizing tracks and mixing it all together into something coherent while drunk “fans” scream ironic Miley Cyrus requests, it can be a downright pain in the ass.

The advent of Serato and the like cut a lot of that work out. Now you just have to carry your laptop around, and if you don’t have something you want, you can download it on the spot. After spending $20 or more for rare singles, it sounds pretty nice. Yet it’s too easy. A hundred killer party songs of any genre are just a torrent away, and with all of the visual help Serato gives you, you don’t even need to listen to the music before you mix it.

In terms of DJing, Turntable.fm doesn’t offer much. Usually you’ll end up in a queue of five people, waiting your turn to put on a track. The idea then is to build a collaborative playlist, one person feeding off the next. But it doesn’t work that way. Adding an element of competitiveness into the mix just swings the selections too far either into I’m-hipper-than-you obscurity or pandering popularity. With the ability to simply fire off a song to a bunch of people, without any real effort or interaction, there’s no real reward or consequence to whoever’s selecting. That just makes things stale, which is probably why every day I’ve heard the same ten mid-90s tracks in the “Old School HIp Hop” room with the occasional seven-minute Euro House remixes tossed in.

There’s a lot of potential with Turntable.fm. When the DJs are good, it’s a brilliant way to find new music. With the ability to have private rooms, it also offers a ridiculously easy platform for pirate radio. Imagine a block party with every house playing the same feed, or having a cross-country party with the guys or gals spinning based anywhere. But at the same time, imagine if a chain of clubs had the same guy piped in from some mysterious, off-site location. Turntable.fm’s concept doesn’t make that idea sound so ridiculous anymore, and it’s that disconnect that leads to a lack of push for creativity and stale sets.

I can’t deny that Turntable.fm is a pretty cool concept to add to the already gratuitous list of internet radio option. But to call it the future of listening to music? That’s disconcerting.