Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 107 posts

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#61

Post by JonFish85 »

Taking on Spotify seems like an odd choice to me. To me it would seem that Spotify has a huge fight ahead of it, even though it has raised well over a billion dollars at this point. They're fighting against the platforms that already exist: Apple Music & Google Play. Apple Music offers basically the same thing except with tighter integration with their hardware (and iTunes for buying the songs that artists don't allow to be streamed), as does Google Play.

It seems to me that Spotify is fighting an uphill battle saddled with an enormous valuation ($10b-ish I believe?); SoundCloud really wants to fight against them for whoever is left after Google & Apple? And, through all of this, Spotify & SoundCloud are paying a huge chunk of their mobile revenue directly to their competitors (Apple/Google stores). It doesn't sound like a space that I want to be in!

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#62

Post by whoopdedo »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #44
geostyx wrote: post #39

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.

Disney uses go.com for all its sites, which include ABC and ESPN.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#63

Post by lotso »

f_allwein wrote: post #8

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)?

Rdio tried this.

>That $3.99 will buy you only so much. Rdio says the service, called Rdio Select, will include two components: 1) Pandora-like streaming radio stations, without ads, and with the ability to skip ahead as often as you want, and 2) daily access to 25 songs of your choosing. Subscribers will be able to download the 25 songs and replace some or all (or none) of them each day, so long as the number doesn’t exceed 25.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/rdio-to-launch-cheaper-...

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#64

Post by hnexamazon »

finnh wrote: post #58
hnexamazon wrote: post #52

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…

Great analysis of Soundcloud's problems. I love it for all the same reasons (something like 90% of the new music I've found over the past 4 years is via soundcloud), but any ability to filter/manage/sort/search your favorites or your stream is basically missing. 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…

I actually spent the last two years writing a music app that integrated with the Soundcloud API to provide the bulk of the music content. To call their iOS SDK "neglected" is an understatement, but what I found worse was the opaque failure modes and restricted access provided by the official REST API.

For example, Soundcloud provides artists with a switch to allow/forbid third-party clients using their API to access the audio streams of the songs they post. This restriction, naturally, doesn't affect the official Soundcloud apps. While it makes my app a second-class citizen for accessing Soundcloud content, I understand the motivation and reasoning for the feature.

However, how does the Soundcloud API surface these restrictions? Through one of the dozens of flags it attaches to the json response it returns when you query for a track's metadata? Ha, no, all the various "track downloadable" and "streamable" flags are all set to true. Instead, it just returns a 404 when you try to fetch the data from the track URL...except when it started returning 401 instead (an admittedly more appropriate return code)...until it started returning 404 again.

So as a developer, my only avenue for not surfacing non-playable tracks within my client was to attempt to download each track, catch any 4xx responses, ASSUME the reason is due to permissions rather than any other potential causes for 4xx errors, and hide the content within the app.

I can understand Soundcloud's lack of enthusiasm for providing decent 3rd-party integrations, but if your external API is this much of a mess, I'd hate to see what you vend internally. The fact their permissions token provides zero granularity is not surprising to me at all.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#65

Post by finnh »

hnexamazon wrote: post #64
finnh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great analysis of Soundcloud's problems. I love it for all the same reasons (something like 90% of the new music I've found over the past 4 years is via soundcloud), but any ability to filter/manage/sort/search your favorites or your stream is basically missing. 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…

I actually spent the last two years writing a music app that integrated with the Soundcloud API to provide the bulk of the music content. To call their iOS SDK "neglected" is an understatement, but what I found worse was the opaque failure modes and restricted access provided by the official REST API. For example, Soundcloud provides artists with a switch to allow/forbid third-party clients using their API to access…

That is tragic. I'm such a huge fan of SoundCloud - I even pay for a pro account, even though I don't post that much audio, just to give them $$ - but ... sigh. These are not good problems.

And here I thought their Roshi library looked pretty good. Maybe the talent is all on the backend there.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#66

Post by tedmiston »

JonFish85 wrote: post #61

Taking on Spotify seems like an odd choice to me. To me it would seem that Spotify has a huge fight ahead of it, even though it has raised well over a billion dollars at this point. They're fighting against the platforms that already exist: Apple Music & Google Play. Apple Music offers basically the same thing except with tighter integration with their hardware (and iTunes for buying the songs that artists don't allo…

> And, through all of this, Spotify & SoundCloud are paying a huge chunk of their mobile revenue directly to their competitors (Apple/Google stores).

I'm not so sure they are. By charging a higher price ($12.99 in app vs. $9.99 on web), I wonder if people really are paying the higher price just for convenience. I'm definitely not.

Tidal is currently doing the same with their pricing structure.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#67

Post by tedmiston »

cableshaft wrote: post #5

"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…

Tidal does it too: $12.99/$25.99 in app vs. $9.99/$19.99 on web.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#68

Post by snickmy »

6stringmerc wrote: post #21
k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

>> "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…

Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah it seems like Dubset and Apple almost forced SoundCloud's hand - I'm already signed up to that collaborative service (Mixbank) and it looks very, very well put together. SoundCloud's reputation hasn't been the greatest lately from the user/producer experience so I'm with you that their 'open-ness' is suspect.

I doubt Apple forced anything. Soundcloud has been working on this for literally 18 months. the only thing holding on was the Sony deal.

Dubset is doing a great job product wise. Really well done, unfortunately they coverage of licensing is really limited. They sort of jumped ahead and sold the platform before closing at least 50% of the deals (see for instance completely absence of the Merlin catalog).

Soundcloud has been always open, but struggled a lot in having a communication channel with their users. Seams getting better lately. Finger crossed!

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#69

Post by snickmy »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

>> "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…

I can't remember any service in the music industry that started from day one World Wide.

Licensing in music is one of the most fkup situation ever. Compared to that, the Tech patent battle is nothing. I do expect a constant roll out of new countries, but starting from US (which is the larger audience as today) does make sense to me.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#70

Post by snickmy »

owenwil wrote: post #29

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'm sorry but I need to disagree.

The problem that SoundCloud is trying to solve has nowhere else being address. Yes, spotify and Apple Music are growing at a fast pace, but they don't necessarily play in the same landscape of SoundCloud.

Content is what differentiate SoundCloud from any of its competitors. If you want exclusive content, early gems or just unreleased reworks, soundcloud is the place to go. Solving this on the legal prospective is a huge pain. That is what Soundscloud has been doing for the last ever. Allowing you to enjoy Rihanna new song as well as 'Dj in his bedroom remix of Rihanna new song'. Try to find that on Spotify or Apple Music.

Now that they've close all the deals they needed in place, you'll see how fast the product will grow.

Post reply on HN