App Review: Turntable’s Piki App for Social Music Sharing

by Dave Mainella

The creators of Turntable.fm are at it again, bringing us the newest addition to the online world of social music discovery.  Introduced earlier this week, Piki combines several elements of online radio and powerful social features to present a platform that continues to emphasize Turntable.fm’s belief in the interpersonal component of the music listening experience.

The concept of Piki is to provide an online and mobile-based radio app that relies on human involvement and personality rather than Pandora-like algorithms.  “There’s still demand to listen to music that’s powered by other people,” Billy Chasen, Piki co-founder and CEO of Turntable, explained via TechCrunch.  Rather than investing users with a real-time, virtual listening space like at Turntable.fm, Piki is a simple and “laid-back” experience.  Users start the app and press play without having to browse and search for music.

Upon joining the app, users are automatically following a short list of people (including the co-founder) so that hitting the play button means Piki immediately begins to stream music hand-picked by these “friends.”

The stream is impressive, browsing through songs “picked” by friends you follow.  It filters out genres that you don’t want to listen to, courtesy of an easily-accessed “genres playing” feature that includes an amazing collection of musical styles – everything from Celtic Rock to Psychobilly.

Sharing a similarity with Pandora, Piki allows users to fast-forward to the next track but does not allow for the on-demand playing of specific songs.  You’ll have to use a different platform for that.  “If I want to listen to a single album on repeat, I’ll use Spotify,” Chasen explains.

But this doesn’t leave a listener to the mercy of the computer.  Rather, it’s the collective Piki social network that determines the quality of music.  The Twitter-esque social features mean that everyone contributes and shares tracks they like, either by searching and “picking” a song or by “repicking” a song that others share.  Users can leave a comment with a “pick” or “repick” for others to read, and they can label a song with a “reaction” that best identifies with the music e.g. rock, fist pump, jam, love.

Piki makes it easy to “pick” songs from YouTube, Rdio, Pandora, or other music sites by offering a bookmarklet to install in your bookmarks bar.  When you hear a song you like, clicking the bookmarklet automatically identifies the track, “picks” it, and posts it to your Piki profile.  A user’s profile and Piki identity is made up of recently liked songs via “picks” and “repicks.”

Piki is currently only available as an invite-only beta for desktop, and co-founder Billy Chasen emphasizes that “Piki is for mobile.”  Keep and eye out for the iOS app, available in the App Store in the next month or so.  It’s easy to imagine this human-powered radio app catching fire in a mainstream social music marketplace.

Watch the demo video for Piki below, and head over to their website to request an invite.