Turntable.fm: Hey DJ, Play it Loud!

As a prospective wannabe geek and DJ, three things in today's world incapacitate my productivity: finding good music, cute little avatars, and Facebook. Enter Turntable.fm, one of the freshest streaming-music programs to hit the Web scene. Turntable.fm is part music-streaming service, part chat room, and part election. Turntable.fm is similar to other music-streaming Web programs like GrooveShark and Pandora; users can create their own custom playlists and listen to music of similar genres and interests. Now imagine taking that playlist you worked so hard on and sharing it with an audience. Live. The more "Awesome" votes you accumulate, the points you get. Users create a DJ avatar and enter one of many rooms where they can interact with people of similar musical taste. Five DJ slots are open for people to take their stab at sharing a song from their playlist. Unlike other streaming music software on the Web, users in Turntable.fm all listen to the same track at once, allowing them to comment or "politely" express their disapproval all in real time. Users can also actively vote if the song is "Awesome" or "Lame." DJs earn points for each and every vote, which in turn can be utilized to upgrade their avatars with newer costumes. If enough people positively vote, the onstage DJ racks up points, and users shall be treated to a full house of head-banging avatars; enough "Lame" votes will force the current track to be skipped. If a song is heard by you you like, add to your Turntable.fm queue. While a song is playing, users can hover over the DJ table and choose to either add their song to their Turntable, Last.fm and Spotify (current not available in the U.S.) playlist, or purchase the song from iTunes store. Although it's currently in beta stages, hopefully the catalog support will expand to other music vendors such as Amazon. As of now, the only way to get an account is to be Facebook friends with someone who already has a Turntable ID. Despite its semiclosed registration, Turntable.fm's membership is growing at a rapid rate. Only a few weeks ago, the number of simultaneous users we'd seen in a chatroom was about 20-30. As of this post, there are rooms that have exploded into over 200 users in one room. Silicon Valley's Coding channel seems to be drawing the biggest crowd.