Another briefly-hot music app bites the dust: social music app Piki.fm is shutting down on 23 September, less than a year after being unveiled as an offshoot from Turntable.fm (Bulletin, 4-Dec-12). The mobile app offered “hand-picked radio”, getting people to choose songs they liked, then listen to streaming radio stations based on picks of their friends. It never launched outside the US for licensing reasons. But the interesting story here is less about Piki.fm, and more about plans for a relaunch of its parent service this Autumn. “The team has refocused on a new version of turntable.fm, coming early October,” explains an email to Piki.fm users, inviting them to sign up for an alert when that launches. This, together with the news earlier this week that Turntable has just disabled user uploads of music, hints at a refocusing of that service. Although with barely 3,000 daily active Facebook-connected users according to AppData, it needs it.
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