3 ways Turntable.fm could monetize its business

Forget Spotify, Amazon’s cloud drive or Pandora. For a short period this spring and early summer, none of these proved as addictive as Turntable.fm for the technology in crowd. But Turntable.fm so far is about immersion and the deep experience, which requires too much commitment and has caused interest to level off. While Turntable’s addictive and consuming nature may have led to fatigue for some, as I mentioned to one reader in my earlier analysis, Turntable can just as easily be consumed passively, provided the company deliver its content in the right way, such as a mobile app.

And now, according to Techcrunch, Turntable.fm is about to do just that. Why is this more passive, more mobile listening experience important? Because as Apple has shown with the iPod and the iPhone, music listening is the primary mobile entertainment experience, something people do on trains, cars, in waiting and workout rooms and pretty much anywhere they pass time or want to be otherwise entertained.

But Turntable.fm can do more than just release a simple iPhone app as it looks to evolve from its roots as a Friday afternoon pre-funk whistle-stop, and it can make money while it’s at it. How? Here are three ideas.

Integrate with Sonos

There have been rumors of Turntable.fm integrating more deeply with Facebook. It’s a good idea and will drive user adoption, but the implementation will likely be a Facebook wrapper around a Turntable.fm DJ room. Not enough, in my mind, to drive passive listening adoption when Spotify and other music services will probably be available through Facebook.

While it’s a smaller addressable audience, there’s no doubt that uptake of Turntable.fm on Sonos would be strong, as has been the case with both Spotify and Pandora. While I think it should offer Sonos integration for free (as Pandora has), I think it could charge for extra features such as unlimited monthly playback and savable playlists. Sonos listeners are high-income music lovers, the exact type to monetize early, since many are used to spending considerable dollars on music.

Allow offline playlist playback

Anyone who has used Turntable.fm has had a couple of sessions, either as a DJ or simply listening in, where he’s wanted to take the playlist offline for playback. When integrated with the mobile app, this is a service that could make for a high-value offering, as others like Spotify have proven. Offline list playback will be, in my opinion, the likely first premium (paid) service from Turntable.fm.

Make a Turntable.fm game

While gaming is by no means passive, it is a unique way that Turntable.fm can build its franchise, by becoming, in a sense, what DJ Hero tried to be but couldn’t: a true DJ gaming experience that has the all-important element of community. Music game interest may have waned with the flood of Guitar Hero copycats, but a DJ game with a real community rather than a computer-simulated one would break new ground. By creating a true gamified Turntable.fm app available across phone, computer and, yes, TV screens, Turntable could allow a new level of engagement and also build Turntable into a broad franchise beyond its current browser-centric roots.

Turntable.fm is showing with the release of its mobile app that it intends to capitalize on its early-leader advantage in social music. The trick to translating that early advantage is to make the service more accessible to a much wider audience, through more screens, listening options and varying levels of engagement. By building off the web service into offline play and possibly into gaming, there’s no doubt it could convert some of its early fans to paying customers.

Question of the week

How else could Turntable.fm monetize its business?
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Michael Wolf

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  1. I look forward to seeing more celebrity DJs on turntable.fm. Imagine the promotional activity if you had several famous actors or sports celeberities playing their favorite music with fans interacting along the way. It’s appointment entertainment all over again.

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