Thanks to Joe’s recommendation, I’ve been using Turntable.FM recently, and I love it. I’ve found several new songs I’ve really liked, and actually several artists I hadn’t heard of either. It’s been a nice alternative to Pandora, which tends to play the same songs and artists for me over and over on the stations on which I’ve Liked/Disliked a lot of songs. It’s also been preferable to Spotify because I spend more time looking for music on Spotify than actually listening.

Spotify and Grooveshark fulfill the niche for me of letting me listen to a particular song or artist when I’m trying to decide if I want to buy the MP3 or not, but normally I’d rather turn on music and not mess with it. I listen to music constantly at work and while I’m fiddling on my MacBook at home, and usually I just want to hear stuff I like without having to figure out what that is. So Turntable’s thing is different people get to choose the music you listen to. You pick a particular room, which may or may not have a theme, and there are five DJs playing music. You can choose to DJ yourself, too. As a DJ, you have a queue of music you’ve found on Turntable, and the top song in your queue is what plays when your turn as DJ comes up. People in the room, including the other DJs, can mark your song as Lame or Awesome, and a little gauge at the bottom of the screen indicates how people are responding to your music. When people mark your song as Awesome, you get points that allow you to unlock different avatars, and apparently you can only DJ in some rooms if you have enough points. It’s also bragging rights, of course, since points show you play music others like. Anywho, here’s a list of the new songs I’ve found just in two days of using the site:

  • In Bloom by Butch Walker and the Black Widows - first cover of Nirvana's In Bloom that I've heard, and it's a nice take on it.
  • Repatriated by Handsome Furs
  • Little by Little (Caribou Rmx) by Radiohead
  • Tell 'Em by Sleigh Bells
  • Oslo in the Summertime by Of Montreal
  • Cactus in the Valley (Acoustic Version) by Lights
  • We Are Young (feat. Janelle Monáe) by fun.
  • Run Run Run by Phoenix
  • With Love by Elbow

Another upside to Turntable over Spotify or Pandora is it’s free, at least so far, and there haven’t been any ads. I pay for Pandora One because I can’t stand ads interrupting my music when I’m in the zone coding at work; they’re really distracting. It’s for that reason that I don’t use Spotify much either, since I haven’t bought a subscription to it and its ads are, while not as bad as Pandora’s, still distracting.