The next Turntable.fm?

Earlier this week I tweeted:

It was inspired by my trip to Dark Side of the Moon listening party at Envelop in San Francisco a few months ago. It was delightful.

Music is heavily influenced by the set and setting. The Envelop team created a beautiful experience with synced lighting and 32 speakers surrounding its music container. It made me appreciate Pink Floyd’s iconic album even more.

In response to my tweet, the universe Lee Martin replied[1] with a link to his project, Listening Party.

I jumped in. Immediately it gave me flashbacks to Turntable.fm, the viral app that launched in 2011. I was a huge fan and wrote about it here, here, and here. It ultimately failed (largely from big label legal pressures, among other things) but succeeded in evoking a feeling very few products ever achieve: Connection.

Outside of group chats and multiplayer gaming, consumer social is primarily an asynchronous, broadcast medium[2]. These characteristics lend themselves to less authentic and more shallow interactions. And we all feel it.

Music has the potential to bridge this gap and bring people together. It’s the vehicle that has brought me closer to many of my friends. Dancing at a live shows and swapping playlists is my love language. :)

I created a Listening Party for Headache’s debut, The Head Hurts but the Heart Knows the Truth, my favorite album from last year.

It feels good to introduce people to new music. It’s an instant icebreaker and gives people permission to share, sometimes things not directly related to the music itself.

Social music apps is a tar pit of an idea with many failures. But it’s still surprising to me that there’s no music-centric social experience online at any meaningful scale.[3]

Music is hard. Synchronous is hard. But I want things like Listening Party to exist and appreciate people like Lee that are experimenting.[4]‍

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[1] H/T Tim Luckow for the alleyoop.

[2] Synchronous social is very difficult to scale as it requires dramatically more content liquidity than its asynchronous counterpart. In asynchronous social, a single piece of content can be consumed for hours, days, or sometimes weeks. It can also be used as a re-engagement hook between both the creator and contributors, pulling people back to the experience days later. Synchronous experiences are short-lived and more ephemeral.

[3] TikTok and Twitch/YouTube/Roblox streaming events are perhaps the most popular UGC music experiences online, but I view them as more broadcast mediums where the platform’s primary focus isn’t music. Airbuds is a promising contender in the social music space, currently ranked #7 in the US App Store’s music category (free).

[4] Listening Party is raw, self-described by Lee as an “extreme beta” lol. I hope he doesn't get annoyed at me for writing about this so early. :)