about soundcloud

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.