Do You Mix Tapes on 8Tracks or DJ on Turntable.fm?

Yesterday I was going through my Twitter feed when I saw several people talking about Turntable.FM.

I knew about Pandora and Last.fm, but Turntable.fm was totally new to me.

According to the L.A. Times, this is how Turntable.fm works:  

“Turntable hooks into users’ Facebook accounts, using the Facebook Connect feature…. (then) five friends take turns being a DJ, each playing one song. Other people in the room vote on whether the song is “lame” or “awesome.” Too many lame votes and the song is skipped. Awesome votes give the DJ points they can use to level up their avatar. Spectators can see how popular the current song is by watching a meter. But the avatars in the room also give a hint — the ones with their heads moving side to side like the song”

I’m not much of gamer, but Turntable.fm sounds like an intriguing game to play.

While reading All Things Digital’s Pete Kafka’s piece on Turntable.FM (where he talked about the copyright issues that the site could face), he also mentioned another fairly new music site called 8Tacks.

According to Kafaka, 8Tracks is a three-year-old service that “also lets you play any music you want, and listen to other people’s music, for free, using a Digital Millennium Copyright Act license”, (a DMCA license gives you permission to use copywritten material, Turntable.FM does not possess a full license).

So 8Tracks is basically the mixtapes I used to make for my college radio show or the slow jams tapes I crafted to woo a young lady in a dorm, which now can be heard by estimated two million people, (note to my young geeks, mixtapes really don’t work on the ladies, even though Babyface made some great slow songs back in the day).

There are still some bugs in the 8Tracks system (really, no more than two tracks per artist? What if I want to do a tribute to Menudo?), but their  long term growth looks very promising as does Turntable.FM, which as the LA Times noted, “is getting raves for combining music with social networking and game elements”.

But until Turntable.FM fixes their copyright issue, this might be the only time in music history where an “8 Track” will last longer than a “Turntable”.

Have you used 8Tracks and Turntable.FM? What do you think? Are you a Pandora or Last.FM user, which do you like better? Is there another music site we should check out? Let me know.

Also read:

Business Insider: 8Tracks: A Free, Legal Music Service We Love

Gigaom: Turntable.fm and SoundCloud ushering in new era of social music

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