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After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

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Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#61

I wish I could somehow archive some of their content. They have a serious amount of audio data and are the only source I know with annotations attached to specific seconds within a track. I've been thinking about building a music-generating neural network–something that may work especially well for electronic (and often instrumental) music that soundcloud has a lot of. Unfortunately, they have limited their API acces…

youtube-dl seems to work with soundcloud urls

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#62
post #55

It's a huge shame that SoundCloud is likely dying, because large segments of the music industry and literally entire genres of music are solely on SoundCloud. This may sound hyperbolic, but I feel like them shutting down would be the "burning of the Library of Alexandria" of 21st century music

As another mentioned, the Alexandria analogy is best applied to what.cd being shut down last year. Here's an article describing it. https://qz.com/840661/what-cd-is-gone-a-eulogy-for-the-great... I wasn't ever a member, but it's clear to me that an immense body of knowledge was lost when it was shut down. Much more so than SoundCloud shutting down, unfortunate as that may be. edit: anyone who was familiar, how did th…

The private torrent sites (What, and others that I won't name here) all tend to refer to Discogs as the authoritative source of catalog information. The difference is that while Discogs knows about metadata, it doesn't have any music.

I think I was depressed for a week when What shut down.

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#63
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MP3.com and SoundCloud are not as comparable. SoundCloud has really re-defined how new music is released and how new artists promote their music.

> SoundCloud has really re-defined how new music is released and how new artists promote their music. For promotion Soundcloud undoubtly serves its purpose, but actually releasing the music has to happen somewhere else. And in my opinion the actual re-defining service in that regard is Bandcamp. After all, you can't buy music on Soundcloud, can you?

You can buy music on Soundcloud.

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#64
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"This may sound hyperbolic, but I feel like them shutting down would be the "burning of the Library of Alexandria" of 21st century music" Except that all the original content still exists and could be made available somewhere else.

could won't

Do you believe that if Soundcloud goes out of business in a couple of months artists affected will never again make those tracks available on the internet?

Why would you believe that?

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#65
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SoundCloud has really re-defined how new music is released and how new artists promote their music. For promotion Soundcloud undoubtly serves its purpose, but actually releasing the music has to happen somewhere else. And in my opinion the actual re-defining service in that regard is Bandcamp. After all, you can't buy music on Soundcloud, can you?

You can buy music on Soundcloud.

Where? As a long time Soundcloud listener and artist I have never seen an option to buy or sell music on Soundcloud. Unless you mean the "Buy"-link which you can setup to redirect your listeners to actual stores and purchase options.

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#66
post #44

They should start begging for money, Wikipedia style. I'd happily pay $50-$100 a year for a service I use for like 10 hours a day (I already pay di.fm something like that).

That's how charities, not businesses work.

It's a long standing model in the software world (freemiums, sharewares, etc). I suspect SoundCloud demographics won't withstand a mandatory subscription.

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#67
post #55

It's a huge shame that SoundCloud is likely dying, because large segments of the music industry and literally entire genres of music are solely on SoundCloud. This may sound hyperbolic, but I feel like them shutting down would be the "burning of the Library of Alexandria" of 21st century music

As another mentioned, the Alexandria analogy is best applied to what.cd being shut down last year. Here's an article describing it. https://qz.com/840661/what-cd-is-gone-a-eulogy-for-the-great... I wasn't ever a member, but it's clear to me that an immense body of knowledge was lost when it was shut down. Much more so than SoundCloud shutting down, unfortunate as that may be. edit: anyone who was familiar, how did th…

But that involved people (say it with me now) steeeealing!

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#68

Remember the employee you guys had that said "Comment timelines are neat but this is not enough to establish a working business"? Find him/her - rehire him/her, and fire all of the fucking idiots that ignored them. They should have sold the idea to Google - at least then we might all benefit from it. Instead, SoundCloud, and comment timelines, will be a neat idea strangled by poor leadership.

Synchronized comment timelines are nothing new, and are particularly popular in Asia (referred to as "danmaku") where language "density" (meaning per pixel) is higher. However, it's very challenging to get this to work for general English-language comments, as other comments in this thread indicate. Perhaps timed emoticons would actually be better suited. Regardless, it's far from clear that SoundCloud has the optimal implementation of this UX pattern, and I don't think that SoundCloud's demise would mean the end of innovation on that pattern.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20907-4_...

> Danmaku comment is a comment technology that overlays user comments directly on the video and creates a co-viewing experience. It originates from Japan and becomes increasingly popular on video sharing sites in China, particularly among the young generation. This exploratory study investigates reasons for watching Danmaku videos through two focus group studies. The results show that the users who watch Danmaku videos found it a way to entertain themselves, to be in company, to have the sense of belonging, and to seek information. Those who do not watch Danmaku videos, however, complained about the abundance of information, the imperfect information quality, and the look and feel. We summarized scenarios suitable for Danmaku commenting from three perspectives: the content, the complexity of information, and the number of viewers. Possible improvements and new applications of Danmaku commenting were discussed.

https://books.google.com/books?id=MAUqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA512&lpg=...

https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/hicss/2016/5670/00...

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#69
post #55

It's a huge shame that SoundCloud is likely dying, because large segments of the music industry and literally entire genres of music are solely on SoundCloud. This may sound hyperbolic, but I feel like them shutting down would be the "burning of the Library of Alexandria" of 21st century music

As another mentioned, the Alexandria analogy is best applied to what.cd being shut down last year. Here's an article describing it. https://qz.com/840661/what-cd-is-gone-a-eulogy-for-the-great... I wasn't ever a member, but it's clear to me that an immense body of knowledge was lost when it was shut down. Much more so than SoundCloud shutting down, unfortunate as that may be. edit: anyone who was familiar, how did th…

I don't know, Soundcloud actually does have an extraordinary amount of independent content ("folk music") that what.cd wouldn't have ever been able to facilitate.

I'd argue that they are both quite prolific, just different.

Re: After big layoffs SoundCloud founder says its strategy is to ‘take back control’

#70
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could won't

Do you believe that if Soundcloud goes out of business in a couple of months artists affected will never again make those tracks available on the internet? Why would you believe that?

A large number of them never will. Any archive of user-created content ends up dominated by "zombie" works from creators that have moved on from that sort of thing or aren't terribly concerned with ensuring that their older works remain accessible (if they even still have their own copies).
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