In a huge blow, Turntable.fm is restricted to the U.S.

Turntable has had the social media crowd in a frenzy over the past few weeks, as it shows real promise to change the way we listen to music and gives us a chance to hang out with our online community in a different way, as well as tech stars that you might find in Twitter HQ for example. But that has all changed now, as users outside of the U.S. get a screen blocking them for access, due to licensing constraints. This comes as a huge blow to the site in the crucial early stages of its development. And while the majority of its userbase may well be within the U.S., they’ve still blocked off a huge chunk of their market, as well as damaging their reputation by making it seem like they didn’t cover themselves against this in the first place. It looks slightly unfortunate for Turntable, as it’s evident it’s a response to legal action taken against the site :

And at the moment it seems to be fairly quiet on the Turntable.fm front. The latest tweet from their official account was one hour ago, and alerts people of the change and that they are working to get people back in as soon as possible.

And it’s all quiet on the co-founder front, as the latest tweet from Seth Goldstein (at time of writing, one hour after the story broke and access was restricted), is a link to a general article about the site. Billy Chasen’s last tweet was 15 hours ago, so you can expect a busy few hours ahead in Turntable HQ :

“Yeah, not legal”

Things might be fairly turbulent at Turntable at the moment, as a recent interview with Sean Parker moved on to the incredible early success of Turntable, and the rather trickier question of whether the site is actually legal or not. Sean Parker responded : “Yeah, I think it might not be legal”. And if anyone knows about this kind of things – it’s him. He’s got the scars to prove it. So while it may have just been a catty remark from Parker, designed to stir up a bit of controversy, the recent blocking of users outside the U.S. shows that Turntable certainly didn’t get everything in order before they launched the site. This isn’t a strategic decision to block access, and while they will hopefully be working on a solution to allow these users back in, it’s worrying that this action comes so early on in the startup’s existence.