TURNTABLE.FM

Music Site Lets Users Play D.J. to Virtual, and Discerning, Crowds

"Both Mr. Chasen and Mr. Goldstein declined to be interviewed."

Those are the founders/creators of Turntable.fm.

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where someone refuses to do publicity, isn’t that how you spread the word, speaking to the media, saying how great you are?

No.

Hell, read this article in the "Atlantic":

"For Indie Bands, the New Publicity Is No Publicity: Hip acts increasingly find that the easiest way to get talked about is to stay silent"

Now that’s more about being manipulative. But a little mystery never hurt anybody, even better, allowing someone to discover something increases their passion for it.

The straight media is last. It no longer breaks stories, but reports them after everybody on the inside knows. That’s how you’re hip today, by getting the word on the new tech development. We used to chase bands, now we chase tech innovation. If bands were as cool as Turntable.fm, we’d talk about them too.

Today your advertising is your product. Your marketing team is your users. It’s a Field Of Dreams world. Most people have no clue who developed Turntable.fm, it’s like they’re gods delivering manna to the masses. Top Forty artists and reality TV stars are constantly saying LOOK AT ME! Those with substance never say a word.

This is a huge change. Something traditional marketers abhor. The focus is upon the product. If it doesn’t sell itself, it’s no good, it won’t last.

Users create buzz. You’ll check something out if you hear about it from a friend, but if you hear about it from the creator, you’re turned off.

And it’s even better if you can’t get in. We used to know this in music. It was best to underplay, it was best to leave people outside the building. That created mania. Now the mania isn’t in music, but Gmail and Google+ and Turntable.fm, all of which started by only letting a limited number of people play. It isn’t how rich you are, the status of your friends, but HAVING friends. Whether it’s codified in Facebook or not, it’s all about the social network. Traditional entertainment companies are run by a small cabal of rich employees, raping the company and only hanging with their brethren at the top. It’s a very thin layer. Whereas the so-called nobodies are friends with hundreds, if not thousands, and can mobilize them in a way the fat cats cannot.

If the music business was smart it’d be like Google and Twitter and Facebook and so many other tech companies that put development before money. The rights holders should get behind Turntable.fm, offer prizes, exclusives, anything to grow the company, thinking about money last.

And maybe Turntable.fm doesn’t last, maybe it’s eclipsed by another enterprise.

Why do the labels always think something’s going to last, like Guitar Hero, when their own acts barely last a season?

SKY DANIELS BRINGING ‘SMART ROCK’ TO KCSN-FM

Sky Daniels bringing ‘smart rock’ to KCSN-FM

That’s pretty dumb. What exactly is "smart rock"? Music made by Harvard graduates? Why does AAA always come up with the lamest monikers? "World Class Rock". No, play me crap. Tell me you can’t get your hands on the best stuff. Huh? Hell, I’d be more interested if Sky had called it DUMB ROCK! That’s taking a risk.

But despite the lame description, Sky did say something great in this article:

"’Sometimes stations, especially noncommercial stations, get caught up in playing music you’re supposed to like if you really knew what was going on.’

‘That’s just not who I am,’ said Daniels, who in recent years also spent time as an entertainment exec for Best Buy before deciding to return to radio. ‘I’m going to play music that can be cutting edge; it might be from an act that will be the next big thing, it can be adventurous, but it’s always going to be coming from a place where you can like it, and you don’t have to work to like it or pretend to like it so you can keep your credibility card. It’s going to be a listenable station with two governing ideas: message and melody.’"

Whew, how can Sky be so right in a world gone so wrong?

Ever notice there are buttons on the radio? And if you don’t like something you can change the channel? Your goal as a programmer is to play what people will like, not play that which is new and different that they should like.

This has killed AAA from the get-go. It’s a problem I have with Mike Marrone’s Loft, as great as the Sirius XM channel is. There are too many tune-outs! Too many faceless acts in the mode of what came before that are not as good as what came before. If it’s just a pale imitation of Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell, spin the originals until someone that good comes along! We’ve got limited time, we don’t want anything but the best, why do programmers always try to shove down our throats that which we do not like?

And we don’t only like the old, that’s a fallacy. It’s just that too much of the new is crap.

As for you scenesters trying to steer society to your likes, those days are through. We don’t live in a homogeneous society, but a sea of madness, where the person supposedly out of it listening to MOR songs doesn’t feel inadequate, but proud. Concomitantly, major labels believe the populace is enthralled by Top Forty beat acts, and that’s not true either, it’s a niche.

And if you play something unlistenable on Turntable.fm, you get booted!