Turntable LIVE is a service where users can share music in participatory music spaces. To learn more about the company, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Turntable LIVE CEO and founder Joseph Perla.
Joseph Perla’s Background
Perla was at Princeton when he started his first startup.
“It was a social network for high school students applying to college, increasing their visibility and allowing colleges to increase their diversity. It grew into Zinch and was acquired by Chegg. A later startup I did during my college years was Labmeeting: a social network for scientists doing academic and biology research. It allowed them to discover research papers and collaborate more easily,” said Perla. “Ten years ago, I was at Facebook leading and growing the News Feed team on iOS. I was an early executive at Lyft, leading growth teams from 2015-2018 during the period of Lyft’s largest growth.”
Formation Of Turntable LIVE
How did the idea for Turntable LIVE come together?
“In 2010 I was going to a lot of concerts and festivals, like Balaton Sound and Burning Man, and I really enjoyed the community aspect of music. I also had a long-distance girlfriend with whom I traded YouTube links back and forth often, and so I came up with ideas to expand on that in a product and social network. There were cofounder conflicts as is common in startups. I didn’t have a chance to finish building and realizing my full vision, but I could tell I was onto something,” Perla revealed. “In 2020, I wanted to resurrect my ideas, and finally do it right while realizing the full vision. I ran a crowdfunding campaign that did extraordinarily well, with thousands of people signing up and paying with their credit cards. Clearly, there was still demand for TurntableLIVE.com. I started to engage the music industry to get fully licensed for a global launch which we will complete and launch later this year.”
Favorite Memory Working For Turntable LIVE
What has been Perla‘s favorite memory working for Turntable LIVE? “I have had two of my children born during these last three years while building TurntableLIVE.com so it’s been amazing to see them be born and grow,” Perla noted.
Challenges Faced Building The Company
What have been some of the challenges Perla faced in building the company?
“There are many challenges when making something from scratch, and the most challenging has been communicating the vision of the final service to get all parts of the music industry aligned by a whole new way of listening to music together on a global scale,” Perla acknowledged. “What has made all of this easier is the incredible team that has built the whole applications from scratch natively on web, iOS, and Android. It’s a really great team of engineers and advisors!”
JQBX Acquisition
In April, Turntable LIVE announced it is buying music-sharing app company JQBX. How did the deal to buy JQBX come together?
“JQBX’s founder and I had been working together trading notes about the social music space for a while and it made sense to join forces rather than working separately. This allows us to present the best-unified application together to the music industry to bring social music listening to the masses,” Perla shared.
Core Products
What are Turntable LIVE’s core products and features? “We make fun participatory music spaces run by real people in real-time LIVE. We have native iOS and Android apps, and we are doing things right by engaging the music industry since 2020 for a big launch this year,” Perla pointed out.
Below is a video overview of how it works:
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Turntable LIVE’s most significant milestones so far?
“Testing a successful beta has been a major achievement. Our next milestone is launching the full service globally,” replied Perla.
Customer Success Story
When I asked Perla if he has any customer success stories, he noted that an artist who performed an album release event got onto the Billboard 200 that week.
Funding
Perla told me that the company raised over $7 million from top investors like Founders Fund and F7.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Turntable LIVE from its competition? “Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and Twitch are not using music at the core of their services. We know that music is an important way people connect with each other and so we are focusing on that as our core function,” replied Perla.
Future Company Goals
What are some of Turntable LIVE’s future company goals? “This is the future of how people will get to know people as well as how they will discover and share music. We plan on launching later this year and providing a whole new space online to hang out with your friends and coworkers and to meet new people and get to know them better,” Perla concluded.
