The folks at addictive music service turntable.fm are struggling right now just to keep the site up and running as its viral growth continues to surge. But co-founder Billy Chasen sent out an email last night with a few interesting updates.
One of the more addictive features on the service is the ability to follow a DJ and be alerted whenever they hit the decks. But so far there is no way to keep track of the songs you discover and award points to for being awesome.
“We have a lot of exciting features on our roadmap, so expect to see new things getting rolled out over the next few weeks,” wrote Chasen. “Our biggest request right now are for multiple queues and tracking what you awesome. We are already logging everything you awesome, so you’ll see them soon.”
The service is hunting for three open positions: a backend developer proficient in python with the war wounds to prove they been through scaling hell before, a javascript ninja for the frontend and a designer with animination experience to craft new avatars and extra virtual goodies.
On the scaling side, Turntable.fm is also going to have to deal with the cost of licensing music. Right now the service uses MediaNet, which charges around $.002 per listener, who is enjoying a serendiptious play, and and 10 cents for the DJ, who counts as an on demand play.
Frank Denbow from Songsicle also works with MediaNet and says it appears Turntable.fm is focused on creating a DMCA compliant Internet Radio site. That would put some basic ground rules in place:
1) May not see ahead in a playlist past the currently playing song
2) May only play or pause the list
3) 3 songs per artist per hour, maximum
4) 4 songs from a single album in three consecutive hours, maximum
5) Users may skip ahead only 6 times per hour
