Turntable.fm

Before Spotify's availability in the United States, Turntable.fm emerged as a novel service that capitalized on the idea of communal music listening. I received an exclusive invite to this platform due to my involvement in a specific community. Turntable.fm was designed around a virtual stage concept, allowing users to become DJs. Audience members could express their enjoyment of a song by "bobbing their head" via a like button, with each like translating into points for the DJ.

I quickly realized that DJs with access to new music garnered the most likes, observing the law of diminishing returns in action. The freshness of the music played was directly proportional to the number of likes received, diminishing as a song became more familiar to the audience. Recognizing my disadvantage in accessing new music, I devised a strategy to manipulate the system for popularity growth.

Turntable.fm allowed the creation of private rooms, where likes contributed to a DJ's overall score, although a separate dashboard displaying high scores focused only on public rooms. To circumvent this limitation, I created multiple accounts and invited them into a private room, engaging in a form of point farming. I delved into the service's uglified source code, deciphering its complexities to understand the underlying mechanics, particularly the rule that only likes on songs playing for over a minute contributed to the score.

Leveraging this insight, I developed a script for the DJ booth that automatically skipped to the next song after a minute, with my bot accounts programmed to "auto-awesome" each song. This setup ensured a continuous flow of points. Simultaneously, I used an alternate account to engage with popular DJs, identifying common pain points such as the lack of an effective ban system and the fierce competition for DJ spots in large rooms.

To address these issues, I crafted custom scripts for room owners, enabling automatic banning of troublemakers and seamless transition into available DJ spots. This endeavor not only ingratiated me with the platform's power users but also significantly increased my technical proficiency and understanding of Turntable.fm's infrastructure.

However, an accidental join into a public room with my point-farmed account led to unforeseen prominence, catapulting me to the status of the world's second most popular DJ on Turntable.fm. This experience underlined the intricate balance between technical savvy and ethical considerations in digital communities, showcasing the potential for innovation within the constraints of existing systems while highlighting the unforeseen consequences of exploiting them.