51–60 of 107 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
HBO Go Go (golang) Go (game)
HBO Go is the only real clash there (very few people are going to confuse an offering by a well known music site with a programming language or board game). I don't see HBO ever making Go available outside the US so it probably won't be a real issue for many people.
Unfortunately, Soundcloud's method for organizing your content really breaks down under heavy use. I have over 1000 songs liked, and scrolling through the like list, dynamically fetching ten songs at a time, is a huge pain. Playlist creation and maintenance is even more cumbersome and limited than Spotify, which is saying something.
Worst of all, the usefulness of the stream, arguably Soundcloud's most unique and valuable listener-facing feature, really breaks down the longer you're using the service. Most heavy users I know end up following over a few hundred artists/labels/channels, accumulated over years of use, and the signal-to-noise ratio becomes unbearable. The sad thing is that the breakdown is purely a UX problem. The webapp is an infinite-scroll nightmare: forcing you to start at the top of the stream every time and fetch tracks 10 at a time. It doesn't clean up after itself, so after an hour of slowly chipping away through your feed, the browser gets so slow and unresponsive on my top-spec Macbook Pro that I often give up and don't bother trying to listen to new tracks that have been posted to my feed over 18 hours ago. Of course, as I now check Soundcloud less and less frequently, that means I am missing a ton of content.
On top of that, due to Soundcloud's reputation as solely a promotional tool within the artist community, you end up wading through a ton of 1 - 2 minute previews and other low-quality throwaways, and songs that you like can disappear from the service at any time, without notice. You cannot build a stable music library on top of the service. In fact, I used to have a process where I'd look for new songs on Soundcloud, and if I found something good, look it up on Spotify and save it within my Spotify collection, because I knew it wouldn't just disappear on me after a few months. Once Spotify upped their discovery game and the available EDM content grew, I removed Soundcloud from the process entirely.
Soundcloud used to be the best game in town for music discovery, especially EDM, but they let that slip over the last few years of struggling to monetize and Spotify's constant progression has now really chipped away that advantage. I've signed up for this GO service, but I highly doubt I'll keep it past the 30 day free trial. $10 a month for offline download and removing ads? As far as I can tell, my stream is the same mess as it was before, and they don't even distinguish between GO-exclusive and free tracks. I don't see anywhere where I can find GO-exclusive tracks within the app at all, actually.
New music discovery is hard and the big players (Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play) still haven't fully cracked it, at least for specific-niche enthusiasts like myself. When the Soundcloud stream is working well, it is the best interface I've used for finding new music I like, but the complete lack of focus and neglect on that front from this initiative means that I probably won't be coming back.
While I like SoundCloud a lot, what the hell have they been up to for the last few years? From where I'm sitting Spotify, Apple Music and many more out-innovated them and SoundCloud did... well, nothing.
I used to use soundcloud all the time but switched to 'Discover weekely' on Spotify, like the author of the article. Spotify hit it out of park with Discover weekly. One downside of spotify is still discoverability, discover weekly doesn't introduce you to completely new kinds of music, it sticks to what you already like. You are on you own to introduce randomness into spotify's discovery algorithms. I think Rdio had…
http://furia.com/newparticles/current.html
http://everynoise.com/engenremap.html
https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/3rgsDhGHZxZ9s...
There's more, of course but I agree that many of the curated playlists lean towards popular music. I also follow /r/spotify on reddit and every now and then there's a good playlist on there.
"If you’re an iOS user, it’ll cost more, with the company charging $12.99 for signups to account for Apple’s mandatory 30 percent cut." I'd be a little surprised if Apple will allow them to do this. It's kind of like credit card companies requiring stores to charge the same price regardless of if you use the credit card (which has fees) instead of cash (which doesn't). Charging different prices is a negative signal f…
>> "Eventually, everyone from DJs to podcasters will be able to monetize the same way, though the system is invite-only for now." I'm not holding my breath. Overtime SoundCloud releases something cool it's only available to people they invite and never seems to become available to everyone. On top of that I just tried to signup for Go - not available in my country (UK) so I'm guessing, as usual, US only. Pretty sucky…
Copyright treaties: likely the leading cause for piracy.
I used to use soundcloud all the time but switched to 'Discover weekely' on Spotify, like the author of the article. Spotify hit it out of park with Discover weekly. One downside of spotify is still discoverability, discover weekly doesn't introduce you to completely new kinds of music, it sticks to what you already like. You are on you own to introduce randomness into spotify's discovery algorithms. I think Rdio had…
I am a long-time user of Soundcloud that has recently stepped back from the service. As an EDM enthusiast, the service is the best place for finding up-and-coming talent and great remixes that you can't find anywhere else. The killer feature is the personal stream. Once you've started following a large enough pool of artists and labels, there is no better mechanism for wading through the pool of mediocrity to search…
And, as you say, it's purely a UX problem.
Also the fact that they don't have limited permission tokens is insane. A lot of artists have a "free download for followers" policy, but the integrations that enforce that require 100% complete access to your account. As in, sign me up to follow anyone, post anything, etc. Just to verify that I'm following you.
I used to use soundcloud all the time but switched to 'Discover weekely' on Spotify, like the author of the article. Spotify hit it out of park with Discover weekly. One downside of spotify is still discoverability, discover weekly doesn't introduce you to completely new kinds of music, it sticks to what you already like. You are on you own to introduce randomness into spotify's discovery algorithms. I think Rdio had…
- Follow good aggregator accounts. These repost new music regularly, which appears in one's timeline.
- Follow good regular accounts and play their "likes."
- Go to a song's "related tracks" screen and play those
I find excellent music on a regular basis this way.
why doesn't any music service come up with a less expensive price plan? I would like to try one, but am pretty sure I would not use it so much as to justify paying 10$ (or £) per month. How about a less expensive plan with limited features (e.g. only n hours of music per month)?
I still have my student discount with Spotify so I only pay $5+tax, but even when I lose the discount, $10 is not expensive to me. Especially for what I get.