The concept is very simple and I'm surprised that this has not been done before. A virtual DJ is just what the doctor ordered.
So, I was pleasantly surprised when I could try this out. But be warned, it's not yet open to public so don't fret if you don't have access to this site yet. Firstly to login you need to use your facebook account and one of your friends should be already on the site. In my case, somebody was on and I was through to the next level (Thank you whoever it was!)
Now, you're presented with a list of rooms and you can choose one to enter
The rooms are ordered in descending order by the number of people in the room. You can also search for a room. I searched for "Rock" and entered one of the rock rooms.
Here you see DJs playing and people listening. The avatars are silly, but passable since the site is still in beta. Here the real fun begins. If you like the song being played you can click on the "Awesome" button at the bottom or the "Lame" button if you don't like it. Enough lames will make the song skip. This is where Turntable cleverly adds a bit of social touch to it. The more people that like the song, the more the DJ's points go up. You can also become a fan so that you get notified if the DJ is playing anywhere
But what good is a DJing site if you cannot try it out yourselves? This is where the real fun and the problem lies in. Only the creator of the room can force DJs to leave. Otherwise you're stuck with the DJs. Yes you can "lame" their songs and make it skip, but then again the next DJ plays and so on in rotating order. So basically if there is a DJ in the Q who sucks he keeps getting another chance (which is good in a way). The only way you can DJ is if one of the DJs leave
So, I did a small time gig entering into one of the rooms which had only DJs (and maybe an audience or so) and this is where things got addictive. You keep adding songs onto your playlist and try to build a set based on what other DJs are playing. At this point though, bugs start to emerge. Some tracks don't have preview option so you don't know whether it really is the track you want or not, the search isn't very effective (though most of the tracks you search for are available) and at times the songs skip for no reason. The next screen shows me getting ready to play tracks and the # of points I've racked up
Boy, is the site addictive, Yes? I spent hours together doing this when I had other things on my plate (including watching Prison Break, Playing OpenTTD and taking care of my 1.5 month old baby!). Slowly and steadily I've built up 80 odd points and 3 followers. The inspiration for this article came last night.
I started in the evening in a room that had 5 DJs including me and 1 audience (Rock/Alt Rock was the theme of the room). After 3 grueling hours the room was starting to heat up with around 20 odd people in the room. By then I was tired and energy levels were dropping. And strangely, the room started emptying faster than cheese in a rat home.
Well, maybe the people had someplace real to go out and party rather than on the computer? This I feel may be the biggest downfall of this site. Folks who have things to do will probably be out partying hard rather than on this site
However all hope is not lost. The potential for this kind of site is tremendous. Imagine a virtual party with djs taking turn playing without a real turntable or stream djs from across locations partying virtually in different cities or countries. All in all turntable is here to stay
Update: I had stepped away from my machine and had a playlist on and was half expecting myself to be booted out of the room, but I was still around in the room when I came back. So if you have good tracks on your list, you probably don't need to be around too
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