Can't get into Turntable.fm? Try MuMu Player

MuMu Player is an alternative to one of the hottest new music services, and it's not half bad

If you haven’t noticed, there’s a social media service taking the Web by storm, and it’s all about music.

Turntable.fm is a brand new website that lets you and up to four friends (or strangers) DJ music for each other and anyone else who happens to pop into the same digital room. Each DJ takes turns playing tunes selected either from the MediaNet library or, if it can’t be found there, users can upload tracks from their own computer. Add in a little rewards system where DJs with good songs get more points, and you’ve got a recipe for Internet music fun, fun, fun.

The only little problem is that Turntable.fm is in an invite-only beta stage right now. If one of your Facebook friends isn’t on the site yet, then there’s no way for you to start using it. (Hey, don’t look at me.)

It’s a brilliant marketing strategy that builds a ton of buzz for the site, but it sucks for all the music lovers who want to start DJing with their friends now.

Well, here’s your alternative: MuMu Player:

MuMu is just like TurnTable.fm, except for a few small differences. For example, you can’t search an existing library (any songs you want to add you have to have on your computer). Also, there’s none of the up vote and down vote extras. Oh, and it’s not as pretty. Big deal.

Despite all that, MuMu has been around for a good while longer and, some basic interface issues aside, the upload process actually seems to work a lot better. You don’t need an invite to get started and the music you upload sounds great.

It might be a non-issue in a few days, as Turntable.fm spreads to more and more users, but in the meantime, enjoy MuMu.

As the weeks go on and usage of these sites increases, it will be interesting to see how the music industry responds, considering that neither Turntable.fm nor MuMu have any agreements with the labels. Users are just freely uploading music and playing songs for each other with no oversight and zero royalties going to labels or artists.

Then again, neither Apple nor Google have partnerships with all the labels, and yet both recently announced new cloud music services that will essentially legitimize users’ entire music libraries, whether or not they include pirated content. One can’t see this industry, which was once suing its customers for pirating music, just sitting idle while all this goes on.