Turntable.fm is the hottest music service that you aren’t using

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Internet, Music

Turntable.fm is climbing the charts. According to a story from Betabeat, the Facebook phenom has hit 140,000 active users after just one month. Not a bad showing for a semi-closed beta with a spotty security record.

The popular service effectively combines (free) music-streaming, chat rooms, and voting, all through a Facebook portal. It's similar to Web apps such as Pandora. Turntable.fm allows you to discover new music and create your own custom playlists, only that playlist isn't just for you—you'll share it with other Facebook users in real time.

Add to the exchange a note of gameplay. After you create your DJ avatar, you can create your own room or enter someone else's (if you get overwhelmed there's a randomizer) and interact with other avatars through a chat feature. Each room supports up to five DJs. Take a seat on the stage to share your playlist, created from your own uploads or from the Turntable.fm library.

Finally, voting plays a huge part in the experience. Everyone in a given room listens to the same track simultaneously, with the option to chat in real-time or simply vote it up (via an "Awesome" button) or down (via a "Lame" button). For every vote the DJ racks up points to be spent on new, snazzier avatars. The more favorable the response, the more avatars pack the room; the less favorable, the more apt your track will get skipped.

If this sounds like your kind of scene, the service is still (as of today) accepting new members through turntable.fm , which will prompt you to login through Facebook.

Earlier this week Betabeat also covered how, alongside Turntable.fm's growing popularity, users had begun to write scripts that let them make unauthorized downloads of tracks from the library and auto-vote for particular DJs. This exploit has since been addressed, the report said.

This article, written by William Fenton, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc.