Turntable.fm: what happened, and why it shut down

Turntable.fm, launched in May 2011 by Billy Chasen, Seth Goldstein and Joseph Perla, put people in virtual rooms where up to five of them stood on stage as DJs, queued songs and were awarded points when the room clicked Awesome. It went viral in weeks, drew celebrities and about $7 million in funding, and was restricted to United States listeners by its music licence. It closed on 2 December 2013 as licensing costs kept climbing.

Timeline [edit]

2011

May 2011 Launch

Turntable.fm opens

Rooms with five DJ slots and an Awesome button.

June 2011 Peak

Viral through the technology industry in weeks

July 2011 Decline

Blocked outside the United States

The licence covered US listeners only.

2013

22 November 2013 Shutdown announced

The founders announce the closure

2 December 2013 Shutdown

Turntable.fm goes quiet

Metric	Value	As of	Confidence
Valuation (USD)	$7M	June 2011	Reported Venture funding raised

Metric

Value

As of

Confidence

Valuation (USD)

$7M

June 2011

Reported Venture funding raised

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Turntable.fm announced on 22 November 2013 that the service would close on 2 December, saying the cost of running a music service had outpaced everything it could do to make money or cut costs. Licensing bills rose every quarter, and the service had only ever been legal to use inside the United States.

Our analysis: Turntable.fm invented a genuinely new social shape, a room where five people take turns playing records to a crowd that can boo or dance, and it did it by paying for music under a licence written for internet radio. That licence charges per listener per song, so every bit of viral growth increased the bill, and the parts that made it fun, playing the same song again because the room liked it, were the parts the licence priced worst. It raised about $7 million, was blocked outside the United States for legal reasons, and never found a way for people to pay for a room of strangers dancing.

History [edit]

Five DJs and a room full of avatars

Turntable.fm came out of the wreck of Stickybits, a startup that had not worked, and launched in May 2011. You picked a cartoon avatar, walked into a room named after a genre or a mood, and if a DJ slot was free you could take the stage and queue a song. Everyone else voted Awesome or Lame; enough Awesomes and your avatar's head bobbed and you earned points towards a better avatar. Enough Lames and the song was skipped.

It went round the technology industry in about a week. Rooms filled with strangers doing the oldest thing in music, playing each other records and waiting to see if it landed. Sir Mix-a-Lot turned up. The company raised about $7 million and hit a few hundred thousand users, and because its licences only covered the United States, everyone else got a message saying the service was not available in their country.

The bill

The licence that made it legal charged by the listener and by the play, and it got more expensive every quarter. A social product that grows is a good problem for almost every company and a straightforward loss for this one. Advertising did not cover it, and asking people to pay for a room they wandered into did not work either.

On 22 November 2013 the founders said turntable.fm would close on 2 December, to concentrate on Turntable Live, a paid online concert product that did not last either. The idea kept coming back in other forms, from Spotify group sessions to Discord listening parties, none of them with the DJ stage and the booing.

The domain today

turntable.fm was revived in 2021 by a different team under the same name, then went quiet again. The rooms of 2011, with their bobbing heads and their Awesome buttons, are gone.

Last verified: 20 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).

Turntable.fm

Timeline [edit]

The site through time

Ownership [edit]

Key figures [edit]