about soundcloud

what's their deal with mixes? and animated fonts. i've had three copyright blocks so far. tips?

i'm trying the pitch shift .01 % or w/e. is this what everyone does?

the copyright protection system seems a bit off, i've had a few of my own things blocked for allegedly being tracks they sound nothing like. apparently one of my tracks contained:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qaf1V-weS-I

pretty harsh, soundcloud, pretty harsh.

i've got spambots liking and reposting my tunes -- is this normal? is there something i should be doing to avoid this? it's really obvious that they are not real people.
i don't care if people listen to my stuff or not, so i'm not like actively promoting anything on there. it's just a storage/delivery system. i don't want to look like an idiot who only has spam friends, but more than that i want to not receive any more robot posts. help!

http://help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/367385-how-do-i-report-an-account-for-spam-

thank you, muted

dang why is there so much spamming on soundcloud? i can't post anything without a shirtless brazilian man who is unknown to me liking it and then offering me "real soundcloud followers"
do i really have to block them all individually?

ha, really? i get spambot followers sometimes but they're harmless, no weird comments or messages.

well they're the only comments/likes/whatevers i get, so it's more noticeable :-/

also it happens every single time i post something

my fav thing is people who tag their soundcloud profiles in huge letters on highway overpasses, I've never gone to one though but I understand

Happens every time to me as well, usually within minutes, sometimes seconds, of posting something new. V annoying.

Sorry to hear about your spamming woes. As for me? Never been spammed, not a once. STEVE HOLT!

what am i doing wrong to attract all of the spammors?

Wrong? More like we're doing something so right that They are trying to discourage us. Getting too close to the truth.

right, that must be it
people can't get enough of the magic in my "big bird" drum track

i quite enjoyed when i uploaded a track that somehow self-generated in ableton from a midi error, and immediately had it liked and shared by a bunch of bots. who needs humans.

errors making music for bots to spam humans who need drugs to make music for bots to ignore

ok so i think it's because of what i'm tagging? i put up the most ridiculously unlikeable piece of crap and within minutes an account called BUY FOLLOWERS reblogged it
i don't get any actual real people listening to these things, but i'd really rather have it say 0 than this

any ideas for stopping the spam aside from blocking the spammers after they strike?

i think i worked out how to avoid spam likes: publish your track as private, wait until the coast is clear of shirtless skrilltards then go to the track's edit page by clicking the little pencil icon and change the settings to public

I never tag

I just don't know why they don't just make Soundcloud better overall. There's so much potential for a really great music-based social network with customisable designs, video options, seller options, radio playlists. I know Bandcamp offers a lot of this, but I don't feel like they're quite there yet with the community aspect either.

All that sounds terrible, cluttered, busy

Community aspect works well as it is I think

It would only be cluttered if it were made so. I'm thinking back to the days when people could meet and collaborate on MySpace and the way you can fall down rabbit holes on Wikipedia etc (but with music). Soundcloud's Easyjet aesthetic doesn't seem to make this happen when I go on it. Also their Android app is useless.

You can do all that now

oh right. hadn't noticed. I take it you have to pay to get extra features? Not sure if it's changed since I last did this but it feels like whenever I land on a SC page, I find I have trouble getting any more information about what I'm listening to other than the artist name and their location. Sometimes there are a few notes about the track, but I just feel like there could be more to it. Could you point me to an example of a good soundcloud page?

http://soundcloud.com/norulespodcast

I wouldnt use a tag like they've done - no need for descriptions!

Maybe I'm missing something here, but from the looks of it that link looks very much like the other Soundcloud pages I've visited. Generic orange and white layout, no artist information, no links to further listening, not to mention those ugly unnecessary waveforms instead of a nice-looking player option. I don't see any social network stuff (other than the 'HELL YEAH!' comments which are probably 50% spam) , no video content, no way for the artist to promote their work within the Soundcloud universe (as opposed to linking to their account from other areas like FB/Twitter that is). Or am I not looking hard enough?

Those comments are from the community you were looking for

hmmm...

They also have pages

If you like the music in those two mixes there are many followers and commenters to follow. But perhaps enjoy the music first and worry about other things a different day

maybe the music that is handed to you on a plate with tracklisting and videos and informations and pictures isnt satisfying to you because its no good and needs all that other stuff and the good music is right there but doesnt come to you on a plate with a press release and a write up

I wouldn't say that. Often I get sent to a Soundcloud or Bandcamp page, listen to a track, like it, and then I'm like 'now what?'.

Even if I were looking at a CD in a shop, there'd at least be more artist information on the sleeve than an orange and white circle with "Napalm Death - Meridan, UK" written on it.

You are like why doesnt the person that found this do some more research and send me another thing

What more do you want to know about the artist? You can google Patrick Specke if you really want

Even if I were looking at a CD in a shop, there'd at least be more artist information on the sleeve

It would have the artist name and the label in the record middle, what else?

The facilities are there, but it's up to acts to make use of them. I'm fully used to seeing press releases appended to tracks and sets, with a bio on the left hand column, where there should also be links to the act's other social media presences: FB, Twitter, YouTube, Bandcamp, Instagram etc.

Generic orange and white layout

Are you sat there looking at the page when its playing?

I'm at work, so I can't play it. What do you mean?

The facilities are there, but it's up to acts to make use of them. I'm fully used to seeing press releases appended to tracks and sets, with a bio on the left hand column, where there should also be links to the act's other social media presences: FB, Twitter, YouTube, Bandcamp, Instagram etc.

― mike t-diva, Wednesday, April 9, 2014 12:31 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still think the whole thing looks rather ugly and inflexible. All the pages look exactly the same, there's little in the way of design options. The comments section is mostly just people going 'This is good'. It's good that there's a small section for an artist bio, but I just think they could do more with what they have, make the whole experience more self-contained. It just feels a bit bare-bones to me when you could have this whole universal music service where artists can share and collaborate with each other, link to other stuff they like, and where fans can spend hours discovering new artists and create their own customised areas which they can then share with their friends etc...

It does all the above - and the "barebones approach" facilitates this! the page i linked above, of the commenters nearly all will have pages of their own with great stuff things on. And you see the same people from that first page on other pages - exactly the definition of community. Those people didnt get there by accident

And doing it this way where you have to find for yourself means you dont get bombarded by nonsense recommendations you just see what people you follow comment on or like

The best things dont need to advertize

ie what makes soundcloud good is the fact that soundcloud, mostly, stays out the way

Totally agree. Play a track, go to the act's main profile page (while the track keeps playing), look for their re-posts or likes (RHS of profile page), see who they're following, etc. Or play a track, click on the re-post count, see who's re-posted it (generally this will be fans), go to their profile, see what else they've re-posted etc. Forget the comments - there are plenty of other ways to jump around. And personally I'd rather have a clean, easy-to-follow standard interface than a hideous quasi-Myspace cludge - and in any case, most self-managed acts are busy enough maintaining all their separate-but-interlinked points of presence, without feeling obliged to take on more design work.

I only use it as a storage system. If you want to know more (and you don't, but let's imagine you did), that's what my tumblr is for. I don't have enough songs for bandcamp yet. When I do, I'll collect the good (lol) stuff there.

The best things dont need to advertize

Sorry, but that's just not true.

Agree that MySpace was hideous in many respects. I just wish the Soundcloud site let artists customise their pages a bit beyond what is there. I've never seen the aspects Miketd is talking about. Is that paid accounts only? I've got, like, three Soundcloud accounts and I don't think I was aware you could use it in the way you mention but I'll give it a go tonight and see how that pans out.

What I'm saying is though, why have a Tumblr and a Facebook and a Twitter and a Spotify presence and whatnot when you could have everything all contained in one place specifically for music and music fans? Obv it would take a while to replace all these different media, but none of the above methods seem to be designed with the promotion and enjoyment of music in mind. As an amateur musician and promoter I always feel like I'm struggling to use things like Facebook to promote my sounds because there are restrictions on, say, who you can invite to an event. Everything seems to have to be hosted from outside and it's just an unwieldy bit of kit for the job. An all-encompassing music service with its own social network function (plus the ability to integrate easily with Tumblr, Facebook &c) would be awesome, and I still don't believe the existing options are quite there yet.

i looooove the self-contained nature of soundcloud, and how it's focused on the audio. so glad that artists can't make general status updates (unless they record a message!) or spam their followers...there are enough places to do that, and i like that it's straight-forward and a little opaque.

like anvil said, it's easy to add links to other places in your profile, although i'm not sure you can do it with a free account. i've definitely made more connections and had the most fun/success on SC compared to any other network, there's just too much noise on fb/twitter/tumblr/etc.

jordan and anvil otm, soundcloud is really refreshing in terms of tuning out extraneous noise

i must be using it wrong.

Advertising is not marketing. All things need to market.

okay?

i must be using it wrong.

How many people are you following? Do you trust what they like?

Advertising is not marketing. All things need to market.

soundcloud does this already, no words or links needed

I still don't believe the existing options are quite there yet.

and when it gets to this utopia people will go somewhere less intrusive again

just because you cant see something doesnt meant its not there

Advertising is not marketing. All things need to market.

soundcloud does this already, no words or links needed

I totally agree.

You're agreeing with your own posts Sicko?

Can you tell me about the success you've had marketing your own music without words or links please?

one thing about soundcloud is that it seems there's a real community there for electronic music, but i feel bad for, say, singer-songwriter friends who have a solid following irl but nothing on sc.

Anything I put on soundcloud get played or not played by whoever follows

This Patrick Specke mix is real good by the way, preferred the other mix on there but definitely going to be buying some of the records on there

I never tag

How? The new (well, not so new now) layout demands it. I def prefer not to tag.

Havent uploaded since last year - you cant just tag with some dots?

Why is tagging bad? I tag on tumblr so I can find stuff again -- is it different on soundcloud?

Just a personal preference - nothing wrong with it

Why do you prefer not to tag? Bc of spamming?

tangentially because of spamming...but there is nothing I want to tag it with, there are no tags I want to search for. It seems a quick route to finding bad music

If tomorrow there was a great new tag and all was great under this tag then the day after soundcloud would have 1000x more things with that tag but if you listened to those things you would decide it was time for a day of silence instead

That makes sense. I just use it as a place to upload audio files, but it's not really doing anything for me so I guess I'm just cultivating a group of spam friends who I block immediately after they reach out to me.

soundcloud is actually a garbage site, right? why do ppl like it so much?

is there a better place to post tracks? like i said above, that's the only thing it has been useful for ime. i have made 0 friends via my postings but i didn't really expect to.

post and host, i mean

I use soundcloud to post samples and recordings for projects that aren't super active. it is useful in that you can post long tracks, which is good for the more "avant-classical" stuff I do. But it's function for me is mostly booking and promo. I use bandcamp for the projects that are more "band-like" in terms of having songs and releasing "product"

it's been the most important thing for me as far as connecting with people (except for Twitter i guess), and gathering/presenting a body of work.

also private tracks are pretty great for passing demos back & forth and promos. and i like all the podcasts and radio shows being archived there. i like Soundcloud, ok?

Yeah, in the musical sphere, Soundcloud is probably the closest thing to the dream of what the Internet was supposed to be. What's the issue with it? Not enough ads?

I mainly use soundcloud to follow people I follow in other areas of the internets to see what songs they're liking or sharing. Also, it's great for downloading mp3s (128kbps, sadly) of songs you either can't get elsewhere or don't want to buy—somewhat nefariously.

Sund4r - Usability; the "ordering" of things seems weird to me re: track hierarchy w/in artists' pages. I know a lot of people who have stuff on there and get the hits (for what that's worth... which is likely close to zero) but it doesn't have the immediate monetization option of, say, bandcamp. like, yeah it may be the platonic ideal of music on the web but what's the point of that if you can't live off it?

the "ordering" of things seems weird to me re: track hierarchy w/in artists' pages

you can put whatever you want in the first five tracks to highlight things, after that it's chronological.

i like Bandcamp and its focus on selling/downloading, but it feels more sterile and walled-off than Soundcloud. it feels built for albums, where SC is better for singles.

what's the point of that if you can't live off it?

I hope this isn't the criteria

Yeah, that's judging it as something it was never meant to be. There are other ways to sell things if that's what you want to do.

<i>what's the point of that if you can't live off it?

I hope this isn't the criteria

― ogmor, Wednesday, April 29, 2015 1:38 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</i>

really poorly worded by me. the thought was more like: bandcamp -- put it up for free or put it up so that you can have it be played but not DL-able. it's the same result in a space where the OPTION of having it go up for $ (or not!) exists rather than SC being a depository for all your free music n shit.

<i>Yeah, that's judging it as something it was never meant to be.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, April 29, 2015 3:12 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink</i>

but if SC is as it's meant to be then what is the point? then it's just a music-based social media platform and we might as well be sending shit back n forth on facebook or whatever rather than have a stand alone site that (i still say...) is pretty clunky?

a friend of mine makes a decent living @ music IRL and has both bandcamps and soundclouds but it would seem to me that even if you were interested in giving away your music you'd want to drive traffic to one site that gives you the option to monetize rather than have a cloud of songs. SC seems more like a "content" site vs one that would be useful to the artist.

am I compleeeeeetely off base and alone on this?

Depends on who you are? There is literally no way for me to even imagine monetizing my musical efforts -- that's not the point. If I can get ppl to listen to it, that's great. If they have something nice to say, better. Beyond that I just want to be allowed to exist. Soundcloud allows me to do that. I think focusing on monetizing is too myopic to include all potential participants.

No way is SC clunkier than FB!

even if you were interested in giving away your music you'd want to drive traffic to one site that gives you the option to monetize rather than have a cloud of songs

that assumes that you already have traffic somewhere else and you can direct it, which is pretty much a requirement with bandcamp. with soundcloud there's at least more of a potential to get some traction through their social mechanisms (likes/followers). and it feels like people are more like to share and click on sc embeds than bandcamp, probably because they're prettier.

we might as well be sending shit back n forth on facebook

facebook doesn't have a method to upload streaming audio that i know of, and also is the devil.

Bandcamp is great but also very old-school music business, almost anti-internet, in some ways. It is more elegant than Soundcloud EXCEPT FOR (as previously noted) when you just want to put up a song here and a song there, where BC forces you to put them into ALBUMS/RELEASES which creates this weird formalization of something that you might just want to throw out there to share and get a reaction. I bet that Bandcamp's core artist base is generally older than that on SC, though that might just be stereotyping how young people consume music.

No way is SC clunkier than FB!

And I mean, it's devoted to music. You're not sorting through people's pictures of their kids, ads, political opinions, birthdays, ads, etc when you want to listen to the artists you follow.

soundcloud has your classic organic rhizome structure of social connections so it's browsable in a way the comparatively officious bandcamp isn't

also dj sets and podcasts and comments

soundcloud has great content. exclusive mixes, unreleased tracks, etc. if you don't find it useful, you probably just have shit taste. And the ui is fine.
Facebook is for losers and advertisers.

But I guess soundcloud is "garbage" because it doesn't charge for things. Eughhhhh..

Is there a way to find out what I listened to on soundcloud yesterday while not logged in? The player moves on to "related tracks" at the end of the track you listen to but they don't get added to browser history and there's no obvious history list on the site for non-logged-in users.

I heard a great track on a mix and went back to the mix I thought I was listening to and the great track isn't there any more so it must have come up after that mix finished, but the list of related tracks has changed too, as have the search results for my original search term, so neither of those is bringing up anything which looks right - mostly single tracks rather than mixes.

I guess some people pine for the old days of auditory "missed connections" in these days of listening to Spotify instead of radio and having the Shazam app in yr pocket at the supermarket etc but hey, seems I found a way to get one via new technology. I'll probably never know what it was except that it was approx 31 minutes into whatever I was listening to which wasn't what I thought I was listening to.

hurrah, found a soundcloud log file in sqlite format in Chrome's "local storage" folder, signed up for the soundcloud API and fed the track IDs in to get titles (possibly not an approved use of the API), was eventually reunited with the mix in question

you may laugh at me for being easily impressed now but the track was Philip Glass - The Geometry of Circles and I should probably have known what it was because I've seen the video before

a successful afternoon at work! (umm)

please continue talking about being recording artists who use soundcloud, sorry for my dorky interruption but this was #1 thread with soundcloud in title

What's going on at the moment?

Seeing lots of posts on FB and Twitter about people having their accounts closed (most of which were pro accounts hosting their own mixes and edits etc)

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/80456/20150831/soundcloud-sued-for-copyright-infringement.htm

and most of the tracks getting pulled are remixes or mixes that contain recordings owned by Sony, correct? i've also heard that there's a 'three strikes' policy as far as shutting down accounts that posted this flagged content (which is super dumb, since apparently it's retroactive and people have had this stuff up for years in some cases).

i know the backlash is real and some people are leaving soundcloud on principle, but i'm not ready to let go. most of what i post & listen to there is original music, not dj mixes or remixes, and i haven't had any issue with my mixes either.

Soundcloud is still good for me too, but i'm finding more things at Mixcloud these days. If Mixcloud would just fix their buggy app, I'd be happy there.

the problem with soundcloud is that they don't pay their PRS fees, which is pretty morally indefensible afaict

http://i57.tinypic.com/x3cw1i.jpg

I was just vibing on the artwork for this funky track when a full screen ad popped up. turn off automatic updating quick!

imho: if ur songs aren't for sale anywhere you should put an option to download... so frustrating when a song you like is trapped on the cloud. i know you can rip but the way i used to do it no longer works and now i have to look up a new way to do it? and what will happen when you take it down?

http://anything2mp3.com/ works for me

thx mate

Yeah but ripping it will only give you the song in 128 :(

tru

on soundcloud all roads lead to bad 'trap' music

128 > 0

also tru

http://mp3fiber.com lets you rip at 320. I use it a lot.

youtube-dl works for Soundcloud.

What's the bitrate of the soundcloud original?

It's 128 as far as I can tell (so ripping it at 320 doesn't mean shit if the original source is 128, what you get is just a worse version, just bigger)

(btw you don't need anything special for soundcloud, the developer tools in Firefox will tell you the URL of the mp3 file being played)

It's 128 as far as I can tell

so even if you upload a wav, it converts it to 128 for playback? never really thought about that.

i've ripped a few things by opening Audacity and recording a wav as it plays on SC, no idea if that's any better than these other methods.

"Please be aware that we transcode all tracks to 128 kbps mp3 for streaming playback. However when you make your track downloadable, this allows your listeners to download your track in the exact format that you uploaded, without any transcoding."

(Performers will often given permission to stream something but not to make it available for download btw.)

Well unless there's a premium version that streams WAV, yeah, I have only ever seen 128k mp3 (just like bandcamp, bands upload lossless but the streaming is only 128).

From their help page:

Please be aware that we transcode all tracks to 128 kbps mp3 for streaming playback. However when you make your track downloadable, this allows your listeners to download your track in the exact format that you uploaded, without any transcoding.

As for recording the stream, it can only be as good as the stream itself.

what he said

I can confirm that the downloads are at other than 128. I downloaded a hundred aphex twin tracks and the bitrate was all over the place.

Makes sense. I do like the ability to make tracks available for streaming but not dl, fwiw.

"As for recording the stream, it can only be as good as the stream itself.

― moans and feedback (Dinsdale), Monday, January 18, 2016 2:52 PM Bookmark Flag Post"

Not to mention, you know, the song.

Doomed?

http://www.factmag.com/2016/02/11/soundcloud-financial-report-44m-losses/

It would be sad to see Soundcloud close, but afaict they still give away most of their services for free so I can see how it would be difficult to make money that way

i hope they don't tank

an acquaintance of mine recently moved to berlin to work for them, hope he doesn't get canned. feel like they'll survive though

Yeah, I do wonder how SC makes money sometimes.

they charge you if you upload more than 3 tracks i think? i know bc i used to upload my radio sets to it and then switched to mixcloud when i hit the pay limit. otherwise no idea how they make money. ads?

They've never charged me.

3 hours actually

http://payments.help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/2159342-learn-about-our-pro-plans

While SoundCloud brought in €15.37m ($17.35m) in 2014, it lost a total of €39.14m ($44.19m). Employee wages during that period also increased 42.5% to €17.9m, meaning that the average wage per employee for that year totalled €79,980.

sweet raises

i wonder if they could be profitable at this point by having only subscription plans for uploaders (or lower the time limit for free plans), but be totally ad-free (and also stop dealing with the majors, so that people wouldn't have to worry about getting mixes taken down). that would be my ideal, but i know that a lot of people wouldn't feel the same way.

Yeah, just charge everyone a nominal fee to have a page.

an acquaintance of mine

is it the same acquaintance who's been posting about this story on twitter all afternoon?

It does seem like kind of an impossible business model for Soundcloud -- but I also wonder about Bandcamp, and frankly, I'd be MUCH more sorry to see that go, as it offers a real alternative to iTunes and physical media outlets as far as whole albums and getting to know a (new) artist's catalog.

There was a story earlier this year, or maybe late last year, about how streaming services were all essentially doomed, because it's too easy to stream for free via Youtube et al. I think Facebook was looking at starting their own streaming service, but only because they could see the writing on the wall, and thought it was better to get in now while some money was still available.

Bandcamp feels more a proper shop that happens to let you stream the music rather than a streaming platform (and I think there's now a limit to how many times you can stream an album, so it's clearly a check-out-then-buy kind of deal, they're not supposed to be as an alternative to youtube/spotify imo).

"feels more like"

Without giving anything away -- this is friend of a friend level stuff, I grant -- Bandcamp is not only doing just fine but thriving more than a lot of people may guess.

good news! :)

I think there's now a limit to how many times you can stream an album,

this is set by the artist btw (it's optional)

Well good -- imo they're the best on the net for new music, and it's not really even close.

bandcamp needs a redesign, its kinda ugly imo

yeah bandcamp is the way to go

xp oh ok I didn't know that

Bandcamp feels more a proper shop that happens to let you stream the music rather than a streaming platform

agreed, which is both good and bad. Bandcamp is probably more important in the long run, but if you're starting from an audience of zero and you put something up on BC, chances are it's just going to rot out there. on SC there's a much better chance of people finding it (through followers/likes/reposts etc).

Yeah, just charge everyone a nominal fee to have a page.

Either this or allow a few ads, which I could probably live with, I guess?

Re: those juicy looking 80k wages - typically in NW-Europe the 'salary costs' in the company books are the costs to the employer, not the (gross) wage of the employee. Social and other charges are high and in practice the rule of thumb is that only half of the cost to the employer ends up with the employee.

chances are it's just going to rot out there

^^^ my songs on SC have got way more views than my BC albums. Releasing stuff on BC sometimes feels like hurling things into the void.

xxxp It might not be on par with soundcloud's (which I'm not very familiar with) but there is a follow feature on bandcamp too, you can follow users and see what they buy, and stream it directly from their profile page.

is it the same acquaintance who's been posting about this story on twitter all afternoon?

nah just checked his twitter feed. only tweets today were about gravity waves and a conference on free monads (go figure)

^^^ my songs on SC have got way more views than my BC albums. Releasing stuff on BC sometimes feels like hurling things into the void.

Definitely this. There's not even a comparison for me.

same. the people i see do really well on BC are the ones that have a loyal following and also commit to only making the music available there (not posting anything in full on Soundcloud, and going through digital distro to iTunes/Spotify/etc, at least not for awhile after release).

bandcamp is for rawk, soundcloud is for beats

singer songwriter i played drums for last year was stunned at how much money she made off of bandcamp

Bandcamps search functions are terrible.

Re: those juicy looking 80k wages - typically in NW-Europe the 'salary costs' in the company books are the costs to the employer, not the (gross) wage of the employee. Social and other charges are high and in practice the rule of thumb is that only half of the cost to the employer ends up with the employee.

― Siegbran, Thursday, February 11, 2016 4:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

those aren't particularly high wages for tech though, are they?

worst thing about bandcamp is the way it looks (overwhelmingly rectangular, hard to make page look attractive (which ok yes it's all about the music but every ingredient of first impressions matter when you're flitting through 15 random bands an hour)) and no social media dimension (aside from those comments) or sense that anything on the site is in any way connected to anything else on the site. like, if you stumble on a band you like you should be able to easily navigate to side projects, friends bands, labels they're on, etc etc. not that it's impossible to convey any of that info but the environment doesn't really encourage that kind of wandering & stumbling through, you almost necessarily have to get externally linked

that's one thing i really like about soundcloud. if i find some bedroom beatmaker i like, i can see the tracks they liked, see their 'friends', etc

one quirk of BC is that you kinda judge how someone else's album is doing by the number of those little squares, but those only show up if someone has a BC account (fan or artist) afaik. not that it matters, but sometimes i wonder if only 10 people have actually bought a certain album, or if the number is a lot higher but most people don't bother to sign up for an account.

the way I experience Soundcloud is more to sample single tracks, mixes, radio shows, remixes, etc. I don't go there to hear (or buy) whole albums. Make no mistake, I use Soundcloud as well, but since I use Mixloud for mixes, and Bandcamp for full albums, my needs at SC are fairly limited. To me, the biggest advantages there are that a) people can comment on specific parts of a track, and I can easily track downloads/streams, and b) I can see the waveform.

big spam mail outs today from various wannabe soundcloud obviously thinking the news may make more people jump ship.

https://www.orfium.com/welcome/

it would be a real pain for me if SC went down as it has become a pretty integral part of what i do but i'd no doubt get over it. i have a strong feeling it won't fail or some bigger company will eventually buy it.

in some ways i feel like my SC page is the only semi-tangible evidence of all the time i've spent making music over the last 6 years. or at least the most comprehensive, since it's my best way to collect & present tracks that were released on different labels.

same! only minus the label stuff and -3 yrs

The chances of some tech giant buying it must be pretty high, regardless of losses.

I'm not good enough to try to sell stuff on bandcamp yet. Hopefully SC will eke it out until I get there.

I'm guessing you probably need to take stuff off SC for people to buy it on Bandcamp, at least based on my experience with not doing that.

The end is nigh

http://variety.com/2017/music/news/soundcloud-has-enough-money-to-survive-only-50-days-report-claims-1202494582/

goddamnit

i gotta grab my shit off there

loved soundcloud

Yeah, back up your own stuff, and download whatever else is up there that is great. In fact, people want to turn this into a rolling recommendations thread, they should.

Oh, hell.

arse, but, not totally unexpected to be honest.

i use it a lot via sonos app to check out new stuff, makes it so easy to hear stuff via my hi-fi as opposed to crappy laptop speakers.

how bad does this fuck up the whole podcast industry? seems like a of big podcasts get a lot of their listens through Soundcloud

it's a pretty small piece of the picture tbh

i'm kind of mad at soundcloud actually. they created, basically, tumblr for music, totally failed to get their music rights in order, and now they're letting it die even though people love it :/

I'll be very sad if it folds, it's the platform I've had the most success with in pretty much all respects (finding music, connecting w/people, and getting my own work out there).

Yeah, same. :(

i continue to see things expire before i figure out what they are or if i have use for them

I am kind of glad this means I won't have to make an account once I get my one-man-band back together

Also, completely on the same page as Morbius here!

I mean I knew I should be taking advantage of it, but then I would go look at all the little iconified comments on time stamps along the bottom and just NO NOT

Frequently maddened by inability to download podcast episodes. No, i do not want to listen to this on my desktop.

pour one out

Chance to the rescue:

https://blavity.com/soundcloud-saved-chance-the-rapper

!!

Even more impressive than a money phone!

Still seems pretty nebulous: http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/chance-the-rapper-says-soundcloud-is-here-to-stay-in-cryptic-tweet-1202496118/

Chance’s manager had not responded to Variety’s requests for comment at press time, and a rep for SoundCloud told Variety that the rapper is essentially spreading good vibes about the company during a challenging time and that if he is making a more material commitment to the service, she is unaware of it.

Soundcloud still says they're here to stay, though.

Companies that are run badly by incompetent/inexperienced people are not, usually

In the space of a week I have gone from knowing nothing about Alex Ljung to learning that he is very bad at business and terrible with money

Any company that hires about a zillion people and pays for them all to move to Berlin despite not having a business plan has got its work cut out

I love Soundcloud but, yeah, no, I never saw how it could be financially viable. Would make a great public utility.

https://www.axios.com/soundcloud-asks-investors-to-support-rescue-deal-2471398461.html

Axios has obtained a circular sent to existing shareholders on Tuesday, which requires them to accept or reject a reorganization proposal by the end of Friday. If accepted, then the new investment -- $169.5 million at a $150 million pre-money enterprise valuation -- also closes tomorrow. If rejected, then CEO Alexander Ljung suggests the company would not be able "to continue as a going concern."

I'm assuming stay of execution at best.

http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2017/08/soundcloud-saved-emergency-investment/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/magazine/if-soundcloud-disappears-what-happens-to-its-music-culture.html

What was the streaming-download site that Facebook promoted in its early years? Garageband?

A lot of music of highly variable quality, freely available, then it disappears from the internet. It's like Manhandled Birds never existed :-(

Do you guys think the bleak and anhedonic sound of so called soundcloud rap is the “future” of rap in the coming years? n.b. I’m not sayint it would be good or bad either way; i love a lot of music that fits this bill, like xo tour lif3, a bunch of lil peep songs, even that juice wrld track with the sting sample which is such an earworm, but something about the scene bums me out.

Maybe it’s not even a “scene” as such but there a notable mood of hopelessness in a lot of rap being released by very young artists. It’s weirdest to me when that dark, super downbeat sound with the low-affect vocals appears in songs where the lyrics don’t seem to warrant it, like “gucci gang.” It’s not that these are sad or angsty or even nihilistic songs—which wouldn’t be new in rap—there is this drift toward numbness that seems notable. People on ilm have probably noted it

I think like most developments in music it's more likely to be a trend that will eventually become a sub-genre the mainstream can borrow from

my songs on SC have got way more views than my BC albums.

This has kind of gone to shit recently. In the last couple of years the tracks I've uploaded to SC have got a handful of plays each at best.

Oops.

https://pitchfork.com/news/soundcloud-announces-layoffs-impacting-nearly-20-percent-of-workforce/

in the three years since this thread was updated it has really gone downhill as a platform, the hyperactive copyright enforcement on samples, the awful search functionality, the autoplay of seemingly random tracks

otm. need to move over to mixcloud soon.

soundcloud engagement is continuously dwindling away but i'm not sure mixcloud is picking up any of the slack.

personally speaking, all the listens i have 'lost' on my label soundcloud have simply transferred to my bandcamp, though of course that is no use for mixes etc.

Mixcloud has it’s own set of problems IMO, not least the inability of rewinding if you don’t have a subscription.

mixcloud and bandcamp do two different jobs, and soundcloud tried unsuccessfully to do both, I have had uploads rejected from mixcloud for being too short, "but that's literally every recording from 1860" I said, they didn't seem to know what to say to that.