Turntable.fm has secured licensing deals with all four of the major record labels (Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI), which will obviously go a long way in making the service more useful to the mainstream.
Chairman Seth Goldstein announced the news today at SXSW, and tweeted about it:
excited to announce that we now have licenses in place w all four majors- emi, sony, universal and warner! twitter.com/seth/status/17…
— seth goldstein (@seth) March 13, 2012
Goldstein told Billboard, “This feels like an all-time record speed launch – when we launched we really didn’t come at this from the music industry, it was all new to us. Our model is unique – we’re not a radio service, not an on-demand service. We have interesting aspects that really require some out-of-the-box thinking. We felt that from the get-go the labels were absolutely different from what I’d been led to believe. They gave us a lot of time and attention. Compared to their user base, we’re a tiny service in the broad scheme of things.”
As it is for many startups (and fans of music, for that matter), SXSW has clearly been a fun event for Turntable.fm. Here’s some video the company posted with its avatar DJing at the event:
Turntable.fm + SXSW +Avatar DJ + Pepsi + Intel from Turntable.fm on Vimeo.
They certainly do have a lot to celebrate now, as they become more of a competitor to more established services like Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, and all the rest. Rdio, by the way, just launched a new version of its site and apps, as well.
Turntable.fm hasn’t even been around a full year yet.