Missoula Music Lovers New Addiction: turntable.fm

Last week we invited our fans to join us for our first ever "Social DJ Dance Party" experiment and yet despite the generic name that sounded like a chaperoned church youth group get-together, this new form of sharing music and connecting with locals has taken off bigger than we ever imagined.

"It's my new addiction" said DJ L-ROCK from Missoula. Best known for his residencies at the Southshore Lounge in Polson and the occasional gig at the Westside Lanes, L-ROCK has racked up an impressive 634 points while spending hours upon hours spinning music virtually in our exclusive Missoula turntable.fm chat room. The better the song the more points his dance floor gives him. "Total blast, I'm officially sucked in" claims DJ Maddog, another full time mixmaster that represents bars and clubs all around Great Falls. It certainly seems that most of the actual DJ's in this state have found their new hobby when they are not spinning real discs.

So what IS the 'Missoula Room'? The best way to describe this new social activity is it's like online poker, only instead of cards people play their favorite song in front of a room full of people in hopes that they will rate the song on a "Lame" or "Awesome" scale. Each person in the room is represented by a cute little avatar that they can customize to reflect their own personality and the more awesome the song the more the characters in the room bounce to the beat of the music.  Everyone can play DJ, just hop up on the virtual decks select a song from a huge online library, or upload your own. Just make sure that song is a killer, otherwise if enough people lame it the song is skipped and the next DJ's song will play.

Even people who have never once set foot behind an actual DJ booth are earning their stripes in this virtual nightclub arena. MizDez (real name Desiree Bennett) used to live in Missoula and has just recently moved to Seattle now finds comfort in the turntable.fm/missoula room because it keeps her connected with her hometown friends (truth be told, this girl actually whooped my veteran ass this week in an impromptu "DJ battle"). RealClint, one of Missoula's premiere Twitter power users spends hours a day playing everything from KottonMouth Kings to Skrillex for his audience.

The Missoula room is full of many eclectic styles of music, but it seems lately the genre that has really taken over is Dubstep. "Missoula likes it dirty" said one chatter last night. Indeed they do, this somewhat new form of super glitchy electronic dance music is taking off by storm on the streets and it seems to reflect that in this local turntable.fm room. Newer Hip Hop always seems to do quite well, as do clever mashups and trance. It's pretty much across the board, genre-wise, but it really does seem that the harder and more agressive the more "awesome" it is.

You can hop into this room anytime you'd like here, but it seems like Monday and Tuesday nights, the nights most of the local DJ's in town aren't mixing at a real bar, are the most popular evenings to get the party rocking on your desktop. So grab your headphones, log in and join the fun with us! Who knows? You could be Missoula's next "Masta Selecta"!