So, Turntable.fm is shutting down. We all saw it coming I suppose, but the reality is still sad. I’m not going to get into the why’s and what if’s that others have so eloquently put into words. Instead I’d like to speak of what this site meant to me personally and most especially my Connect The Songs family. I call them family because that’s what we’ve become. Like all families we have fights and drama, tediousness and tensions. But under all of that is the love and passion we all shared for music.

I first found out about Turntable.fm from reading a news feed in August of 2011. I thought it sounded intriguing, so I went to check it out. What a strange, wonderful, and quite frankly scary place! There were so many rooms! 80s rooms. 90s rooms. Hard rock rooms. Theme rooms. Top 40 rooms. Jpop! I love Jpop! How the hell was I supposed to figure this out? I remember the nervousness I felt the very first time I got on deck in a room. What do I do? Will they like my song? How do I upload music? What’s a bop? It was so exciting! And there was chat. This was a totally new experience for me. Why the hell would I want to chat with complete strangers online? Isn’t that what pedophiles and stalkers do? There’s NO WAY I’m doing this! I’ll just play my songs and lurk in the background. But then I played my song, people liked it. They told me “nice spin” and “I have this album, love it!” Well of course I had to respond to these comments. Three hours later and countless conversations about artists, songs, and memories the music invoked, I knew I was hooked.

The driving force behind Turntable was the community. It’s not necessarily the first thing that one might think of when thinking about a music site. Once I found a home in Connect the Songs, I found people that were so into music. Bands and genres I’d never heard of came up constantly. Most were so knowledgeable about their favorite genre. This is what led me to finding (and buying) new music. I will forever be grateful to these people for not only exposing me to new music, but for reminding me of songs and artists that I had completely forgotten. My music IQ has grown exponentially as a direct result of chatting and listening to music on Turntable.fm, which is perhaps the saddest part of it. Though there will be new sites and different ways to experience music online, for me TT was the first, and your first is always special.

I’d like to close by saying I’ve made some lifelong friends through Turntable.fm. There are some truly generous souls in the world, and I count myself lucky to have encountered some online. I’d like to thank one person in particular that made this site so very special. When I first started coming in to CTS (as we call it), all of us were having a discussion about video games. I made a remark about how I wanted to play a particular game, but that I didn’t really have the money to buy it. Josh Wessel (J_Dubb), not knowing me from Adam offered to loan me the money to buy this game. I hadn’t been a regular in this room for all that long, and yet he offers to loan me $60 to buy a game. Since then, he has demonstrated his generosity time and again in various forms. Yet that one simple gesture he made to me, a complete stranger, has stuck with me to this day. For friends like this, I will always think of my time on Turntable.fm as magical and wondrous.

Chad Ito aka chadtz!/badtz!/badtzninja

Please leave your TT stories below in the cooments. We’d all love to hear them.

Oh the times, they’re a’changin’!

As some of you are probably aware, for a while now we’ve been talking about simplifying the rules. But…that’s all we have done for a good long while – talk about it.

Until now!…

A decision has been made after a land-slide victory in a moderator pole on what we, the mods, felt would be best. The two biggest contributing factors to this decision were 1) Making the room easier to understand, and 2) Reducing the level of effort REF requires for upkeep.

Without further adieu – The new rule. Yeah, rule. Singular. 4 consecutive letters or more in the song title or artist name.

That’s it. No more caveats. No two-letter and three-letter words. 4 or more. No more numbers to #’s.

Now…I know some of you aren’t going to be crazy about this. Heck, not many people are fans of change. And any of you that have been around long enough know that we’re all about keeping these sorts of decisions democratic…but in this situation I strongly feel that this is the change we need to make which is why we didn’t post a poll here in this group.

I think for some time now a good number of us have just been using the “four letters or more” to help simplify things for noobies anyway.

In the words of the great American hero, Billy Mays, “BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!”

This one is sure to out outrage a number of you…but…we aren’t going to be doing any streak resets moving forward after this rule is in place. I know…TT is buggy and shit happens but that’s the nature of the beast. Any one person has the same chance as another for TT to screw up. And the days of “Well, you reset xxxxx’s streak why won’t you reset mine!” will be behind us.

Streaks have always been just an extra fun little thing, and they always will be. Hopefully you come to CTS to hang with cool people (or just to annoy Chad, like me) and expand upon your musical horizons. If you’re only there to increase a number that means absolutely nothing, then you’re doing life wrong.

Now, all of that being said. “WAIT WHEN ARE THE RULES CHANGING EXACTLY?! NOW!?”

Not immediately. When Ian gets a chance he’s going to add some code to REF to advise people that if they connect with the 2 and 3 letter words that in the coming days this will no longer be acceptable.

That’s it folks. Please keep any questions, concerns, or pure unadulterated outrage confined to this thread. Thanks gang.

<3, CTS Modstaff

Howdy everyone! We here at Connect Headquarters have been struggling with a dilemma. We are a damn popular room! I know you say, “Hey that’s great!” and it is. But this also means a DJ queue that is regularly 8-9 deep. This is not good for our ADD afflicted members. So, to make sure everyone has a great time, we are going to try out a “play 2 and down” system. We hope this will ensure everyone gets to spin and that the wait will be tolerable. Please be patient with us as we bask in the glory of our awesomeness–I mean try to find an equitable solution for everyone.

The Staff

The ttdashboard bots track the songs played in the room. They are in the room at my request, please do not boot them!

our ttdashboard is at http://www.ttdashboard.com/room/connect_the_songs_read_info/