Education. Health care. Music. Three industries within which I would never try a startup due to such twisted incentives and resistance. Much respect to those who do try even when they know the odds.
Good thing there are plenty of start-up opportunities in Telecom, Energy, and Agriculture. </sarcasm>
The way I see it: Education is seeing growth in charter schools, MOOCs, iTunes U, etc. Healthcare is changing under Obamacare[1]. Music is now brought to you by Rdio and Spotify.
Agriculture probably does have a huge number of opportunities for startups, actually. There's some international protectionism and subsidies, but overall, it's not too bad.
That aside, I think most industries have significant amount of twisted incentives and resistance. The challenge to building a successful company is finding an opening with a narrow problem or stakeholders.
Good luck! We recently launched ours - web app that turns multiple Internet devices into a stereo system; all devices play the same audio at the same time.
> At the end of the day, I'd rather have it exist then have it be a meal ticket.
I find this a bizarre attitude. I mean, sure, it exists now. But making it into a meal ticket is the surest way to make continue to exist when you move onto some other project. If it isn't supporting itself, it depends on your constant upkeep.
It's a hobby to me. some people do role playing games. some do basketball. I do recreational programming. I also did this project to answer a number of questions about user engagement and interactivity.
The biggest is that I wanted a total anarchy - as per the technical definition. Anyone can add, delist, skip, enqueue a song - at any time. You can cut into someone's video without anyone's permission.
I didn't find answers exactly. But I know more now then I did.
Plus really, will I stop watching music videos on youtube? I don't think so. A platform that plays them more seamlessly than youtubes? I'll use that for sure.
The mashup.fm room I frequent was pretty upset and many have since moved to plug.dj which streams directly from Youtube and SoundCloud in an attempt to not host any music and bypass copyright issues. I wonder how long it can last. Plug.DJ also has international support which TT lacked.
I love Turntable, and it's sad to see this, but it's not a huge surprise; for their whole history they've offered an amazing service and charged well below the true value of the service (they only added ads recently).
I figure we'll soon see a tiered model letting users upload directly for a fee, which is probably a good move.
This is very sad news, they were a darling when they started http://allthingsd.com/20110621/turntable-fm-really-is-awesom... and for the most part of the last year I used to like them mostly their mashup station. But somehow the repetitive nature of the songs being played and the whole idea that as a user, I just want to listen to music and not participate made me switch back to Pandora. I had no idea that they were bleeding internally and reading the news just make me realize that in the start up world you never know when you are in the limelight and when you go in oblivion.
I never could use turntable because I'm in the UK but from what I heard a lot of the rooms ended up with a really narrow focus with people downvoting any music that didn't fit some ultra specific genre.
I've used similar sites that made it much harder to 'reject' songs (Collaborative Jukebox, Listening Room) and the experience is actually much nicer - you get to hear a much wider range of interesting stuff.
Turntable.fm is operating in a tough environment for sure, but I think one mistake they've made is that encouraging people to vote for and against tracks is an obvious feature, but not necessarily a very wise one.
One man's trash is another man's treasure. This ultra specific nature of the rooms is one thing I liked about turntable over other services. I found everyone else's "Radio" paled in comparison to community based playlists. They played the same "safe" songs over and over again; however, with turntable you get people trying to introduce new stuff while still under the heavy pressure of the crowd to meet peoples expectations.
This is a great idea and it's a shame that we've come to this point. I guess the current state of affairs with song copy rights and label groups will claim another start up. I've been using this site since 2011 and only hope for the best but damn if only they could have kept it open internationally.
Always sad to see startups struggle, however turntable.fm seemed like a company that didn't have the best survival chances from the beginning. IMO as a company, it offers to little to justify its existence in the highly competitive marketplace that is online music. It's a cool gimmick, or product at best that could potentially be of greater value if it would be 1) part of a larger eco system (spotify, itunes, etc) or 2) as an experimental, self-sustaining through ad revenue, side project perhaps.
I also might not be part of the core target audience for turntable.fm but my experience (and the people I know who've used it around me) is that after trying it a couple of times the coolness-factor wears off pretty quickly.
Plug.dj easily overtook turntable because it was so much easier to add / manage your playlists. It uses youtube and soundcloud links instead of direct upload, which is obviously easier. I think this is too little too late.
"We aren't trying to kill it, you are watching us fight for it."
Correction: A bunch of dust balls are watching you fight for it. Most of us don't care. NOW if you were trying to fight cancer, or send a man to Mars on the other hand...
