turntable.fm

Turntable.fm was created as a pivot in January 2011 by Billy Chasen as CEO, Joseph Perla as VP of Technology, and Seth Goldstein, after the failure of the company's first product, known as Stickybits. Stickybits was a mobile app where brands could stick barcodes on their products and allow users to scan them for rewards. While Stickybits was picked up by some brands, it failed to gain the widespread attention of users. By January 2011 it became clear that Stickybits would not work, so Chasen, Goldstein, Joseph Perla, Summer Bedard, and Yang Yang began building the first version of turntable.fm. By May, turntable.fm was released, and within weeks the site went viral with such celebrities as Sir Mix-A-Lot using it. The board then pulled the plug on Stickybits and went ahead with turntable.fm.

By July 2011, turntable.fm raised a $7 million round at a $35 million valuation in a funding led by Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures. All initial investors of Stickybits were involved in the round, including First Round Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, and Lowercase Capital. A number of entertainment executives have also invested, including Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Troy Carter, MTV's Courtney Holt, former Facebook executive Tim Kendall, The Roots, and Madonna's manager, Guy Oseary. By September 2011, turntable.fm had been used by over 600,000 people and streamed around 1 million songs per day.

On July 28, 2011, a turntable.fm dance party was held at The Canal Room in New York City which simulated the features of the website in real life. DJs were chosen from an applicant pool prior to the party and were allowed to play songs in turns during the celebration. DJs were rewarded with "points" for how many patrons were on the dance floor during a given DJ's song. If too few patrons were on the floor or there was a general lack of interest, DJs would have their turn skipped. The Australian electronic music act Knife Party notably made a surprise appearance to play on the site, attracting over 20,000 listeners.

On November 22, 2013, it was announced that Turntable.fm would be shut down in December 2013 in order to focus on its Turntable Live service, which allowed musicians to perform interactive online concerts.

Legal

Turntable originally had no deals in place with any record labels, and was instead operating under provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which allow "non-interactive" online radio services to operate without needing to individually negotiate licensing deals with individual labels. The service also had a partnership with Medianet to supply a library of songs for those who do not wish to supply their own music. Due to its reliance on these laws, only residents of the United States could use the service. In a similar manner to other services such as Pandora Radio and 8tracks, users were also prohibited from playing music in a room by themselves, there were limits to the number of times one can play a song every hour, and people could not see the songs that would be played next.

Following this period of operating in a "legally dubious gray area" and relying on DMCA protections, the site officially signed a deal with ASCAP in July 2011 that ensured songwriters, composers and publishers would be appropriately compensated for their works being used on Turntable, effectively making the site completely legal. On March 13, 2012, Turntable announced that it had secured licensing deals with all four major music labels.

Spin-Off Companies and Controversy

In 2021, former Turntable.fm CEO Billy Chasen launched a social music streaming offering on the domain Turntable.fm, under the company Testcode, requiring a password to access the site. A social music streaming service run by Joseph Perla, former VP of Technology at the original Turntable.fm, also appeared online as a subscription service using the branding turntable.org and tt.fm.

As of October 2024, the two companies are known as Deepcut.fm (led by Billy Chasen) and Turntable Labs / Hangout (led by Joseph Perla.)

As of November 4, 2024, Hangout offers a Discord server and a waitlist for their application. The Hangout website describes Hangout as "Host your own private hangout, vibe with friends, chat with strangers, enjoy the tunes."

As of November 4, 2024, Deepcut's website describes their application as "Deepcut connects you, your friends and others in a real time music listening experience."