Turntable.fm Launches iOS App Amid Escalating Digital Music Competition

New York-based Turntable.fm has launched its free iOS application as digital music competition gains momentum daily.

Turntable lets you play music together with your friends and other people online. Each DJ takes a turn playing a song and the entire virtual room hears the song. Moreover, you can vote on whether the song is awesome or lame, and if it receives too many lame votes, it gets skipped.

Turntable is also truly social. You can chat with people in your room or become a fan of your favorite DJs so you can find them later. Help people discover new great music or just sit around and listen to the best curated music experience online.

The iPhone app requires everyone to be social, with Facebook connect used to login - same as on the PC/Mac. Despite the small screen, you can actually see which of your Facebook friends is in a given Turntable room on the iPhone app, as well as invite more friends to come in, Richard Greenfield of BTIG Research wrote in a blog post.

Digital music competition is escalating by the day, increasing the threat to Pandora, particularly given that new competitors are far more social than the Oakland, Calif.-based service. Turntable also competes with European music service Spotify.

Turntable.fm, founded by Billy Chasen in January, is a social media Web site that allows users to interactively share music. The service allows users to create rooms, which other users can join. Designated users, so-called DJs, choose songs to be played to everyone in the room in question, while all users are able to talk with one other through a text interface.

The service opened to the public in May, and by late June had already reached 140,000 active users. Turntable.fm is backed by First Round Capital, Polaris Venture Partners and Mitch Kapor, who together have invested at least $1.9 million in the company.