Yesterday I covered how awesome Turntable.Fm is. At the end of my article I mentioned that the possibilities for future improvements are endless and thought I’d share a few of my ideas beyond the obvious solution of putting an app out for the iPhone.
1. UI Cleanup
Right now the user interface needs a lot of work on basic interactions. I’m constantly getting questions from friends about how exactly do you DJ and how do you add songs. It’s very unclear they have a database of songs already available you can easily choose from.
2. Points Structure
Right now the leveling system is a bit broken. You get 1 point everytime someone votes up the song you are playing, but in a small room you could spin for hours and only accrue say 20 points. No fun.
3. Live Listening Parties
Turntable.Fm is arguably the first platform to allow a true listening party for fans of particular artists. Imagine coming into a themed U2 room (that has limited capacity) and seeing Bono, Edge and other avatars for the band playing new tunes off their album. In real time you’d get data about what songs are resonating with users near instantly.
4. Profile Pages/Verified Accounts
Turntable.FM is begging for profile pages. I want to know if that really was Deadmau5 in the room last Friday or what the most played songs are by particular people in the room. It will give me context around who I am in the room with, but also give help guide me into what songs I should spin next.
5. Hall of Fame
Who has the most points in all of the network. Who has the most fans. Who has the highest score amongst my network of friends.
6. Improved First User Experience
I realize its early, but the first user experience for turntable.fm isn’t nearly good enough. There are 0 walkthroughs. No explanation of how to choose, or upload a song. I bet the odds of someone returning to the service when they spin a tune and get one positive vote are insanely high. So develop a quick walkthrough to get them there.
7. Sponsored Rooms/Avatars to Earn
There is no need to force monetization, but I think a great testing ground for how partnerships could work would be to do a few special avatars around a particular band or cartoon character. A South Park themed room/avatar set would make me want to spend all day on the service to earn them.
8. Email Controls
The service sends me an email everytime someone I’m a fan of is spinning in a room. It’s annoying to get 30 emails a day. Make it stop.
9. Drag & Drop/iTunes Support
Adding songs is currently way to complex. People still don’t know how iTunes stores files or how to find them quickly. So the idea of having to navigate your operating system for a song seems to hard. Allow users to drag and drop the file or song name from iTunes into Turntable.FM.
10. Allow Auto-Tweeting/Facebook Sharing of every song I spin
I noticed today people popped in and out based off the song that was mentioned in my Twitter feed that I manually shared. Instead let me toggle an auto-tweet or Facebook post that gets shared when I start up a tune in a room. It will help increase virality, but also allow my friends to come hangout if a great tune is on.
