Turntable.fm, an online music service that creates rooms for people to DJ in and hang out, has been the hit of the summer. And it’s been the subject of a lot of funding rumors as well as questions about when the service will go mobile. Well, today the New York start-up is clearing up those questions by announcing a $ 7 million round led by Union Square Ventures. And it’s also introducing an iPhone app, showing how the engaging app looks like on a smartphone.
The news is not much of a surprise if you’ve been following along. Previous reports this summer had pegged Turntable’s round at $ 7.5 million with Union Square Ventures jockeying with Kleiner Perkins and Accel for the privilege. And TechCrunch last week showed off screenshots from Turntable’s new iPhone app.
Turntable said it will use the new funding to build out the organization, which has grown from three people at launch to ten people now. The service has pushed past 600,000 users and streams more than one million songs a day. It’s had more than 25 million awesome votes recorded and more than 300,000 rooms have been created. USV’s Fred Wilson will join Turntable’s board.
“USV’s record of investing in the great Internet companies speaks for itself — Zynga, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare to name just a few,” said Billy Chasen, CEO and co-founder. “Having Fred Wilson less than ten blocks away to discuss product ideas with is invaluable.”
The news confirms that Turntable, which launched in May, is indeed seeing a lot of progress and has plenty of backers. In addition to USV, Turntable received money from First Round Capital, Polaris Venture Partners, and Lowercase Ventures, who had previously invested in Turntable’s predecessor Stickybits, which raised $ 2 million. Other investors include entertainment figures such as Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter, Madonna’s manager Guy Oseary, Courtney Holt, former president of MySpace Music, former Facebook director of monetization Tim Kendall, late night host Jimmy Fallon and the Roots.
The new iPhone app should maintain Turntable’s momentum. The app brings over all the features and limitations of the online service and makes it available on an iPhone. Users will be able to push out music to other devices using Apple’s Airplay technology. But they will not be able to DJ in a room alone. And as part of the expansion, Turntable is opening up access to not just friend’s of users but to everyone who registers through Facebook.
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