All the electronica obsessed entrepreneurs are hanging out in the Chill Out room on Console.fm right now, a new social music site that launched late last night in San Francisco.
Console.fm is an automated radio station that gathers the top electronica music across the web for each electronic genre and puts it into a group style radio chat room. “Basically it’s like Turntable.fm but we provide the awesome music and allow you to chat with your friends,” says the site’s developer Alex Manelis. We first wrote about Manelis and his co-developer, designer Alex Baldwin at SXSWi when he unleashed the “Where the Girls At,” app, which lowered your chances of winding up at a sausage fest in Austin, TX.
Right now, Console.fm is basically a bunch of early adopter Twitter users hanging out in a beautifully designed chatroom with a bumping soundtrack. While it lacks many of the social features and much of the control of Turntable.fm, it’s a much more laid back experience so you can actually get your work done, while still being musically social during the day. On why he created the new website, designer Alex Baldwin says, “We just had to give in to our electronica obsession.”
Console.fm pulls all of its mp3s from SoundCloud and offers a simple, clean chat interface for interacting with other Twitter users. So far Trance, Dubstep and Chill Out are the most popular rooms on the site.
“I don’t know of anywhere else to listen to good music and chat with brilliant people,” said Nigerian web developer Damilare Onajole of the site in a chat today.
Comparing console.fm to Turntable seems like a bit of a long shot. The only similarities are the chat feature really. It’s more like Pandora + chat if anything.
It would be awesome if we could connect our SoundCloud accounts and favorite good songs directly from console.fm.
If you’re going to feature electronic music, you really have to tread lightly and bring in some human curation. Pulling directly from a stream or an API doesn’t work, as evidenced by the complete lack of genre diversification in the Drum & Bass room. Afraid I’m not too impressed with what Console is doing just yet. It has great potential, but let’s see what they do with it.
@Ryan LeFevre that is a good point
@Brad McCarty you are not supposed to be online!
@Courtney Boyd Myers No no no. I’m not supposed to be working. Being online is another story :)
One major difference with Console is that not everyone is listening the same music synchronously; Console provides full playback control. So someone could say “great track!” but be talking about a completely different song than others are listening to. The fact that everyone has to listen to the same thing, while limiting, is one of great aspects of Turntable.fm. When you say “whoa, killer bass!” everyone knows exactly what you’re talking about.
Not like turntable.fm at all! More like a much smaller and less functional version of shoutcast.com.
Anyone here having problems with console.fm with Firefox 5? Can’t even use it..
Anyone here having problems with console.fm with Firefox 5? Can’t even use it..
There are a few sites like Turntable now. http://www.Lissn.com is like Turntable.fm but for conversations. Anyone tried it?
I like! Just tried it and it is a great piece of software, especially as turntable.fm doesn’t work in Germany.
I also really like using wahwah.fm.
It is also a soundcloud based version of turntable.fm, but as an iphone app.
It lets you listen to whatever music ppl around you are listening to on their iphone. Its quite cool and for free.
They are based in Berlin, so I am not sure what the adoption rate is like in the UK at the moment, but if you are Berlin it is definetely worth checking out..
- Music lover Daan ;)
I cant see this service going anywhere. Its like Turntable, but without the fan interaction with the music, which is the main feature and selling point.
@Brad McCarty @Courtney Boyd Myers Brad is one BIG procrastinator right there. Perhaps an addicted user of 9gag too, hmm?
As true to form, Console is still a bit lacking in curating music but that chat feature is awesome!!!! Grooveshark and console should get married.