Five Lessons I’ve Learned From Turntable.fm
The new social music website turntable.fm has seen a rapid increase in popularity this summer thanks to its signature blend of DJing, music sharing and weird avatars. The website lets you sit in on themed rooms, each of which has spots for five DJs who alternate picking songs from a growing database of material to keep the party going, and keep weird avatar heads bobbing. When a spot opens up, your avatar can jump on stage and join the fun, spinning your own selections. Play what the crowd likes and get points. If the crowd doesn’t like your selections, they can vote down your choice and skip it.
Turntable.fm can seem daunting at first, but I’ve DJed about 20 times now and here are a few lessons I have learned that can help you get started.
- Nobody has any idea what “the kids” are listening to. I don’t care how old you are, everybody younger than you has access to a whole world of culture you can only guess at. So, don’t try and guess. If there are younger people in the room, you will not recognize a single thing they play. Try to find a room with only older people and stump them with your hip new swagger.
- Hip hop is dead. Maybe it’s just bad luck on my part (and certainly my sample size could use growth) but across the board, in every room not specifically tailored to hip hop, rap performed poorly. New school, old school, it didn’t matter. Nobody wanted to listen to rap.
- Chat it up. People respond better to talkative DJs. Compliment other DJs’ songs enough and you might even be able to slip in some rap and not have it get voted down immediately.
- Play “Peaches” by Presidents of the United States of America. I swear, that song has come on and cleaned up in every room I’ve been in.
- 90′s night always plays. Perhaps it’s more telling of the current user base than anything else, but I’ve found it very easy to push a room into playing nothing but 90′s music. Bring flannel.
Now that you are ready to jump in and DJ, here comes the bad news. Turntable.fm recently restricted service to exclude everybody outside the US, as it was getting a bit jittery about licensing rights. No word on when it will open back up to the rest of the world, but one would suspect it is top priority given the global popularity the website was enjoying.
In the meantime, for our American readers (and hopefully soon for all of you) if you ever come across Q.E.D. in one of the rooms, that would be me. And if you wait around for seven minutes, you will most likely hear “Peaches.”
- Jason Oberholtzer
