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SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

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Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#81

Post by zymhan »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #64
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #35

When I was a truck driver, Satellite Radio was practically a necessity. Sure I loaded up my ipod with music, but the selection was too damn limited and I would tire of hearing the same songs over & over again. The best case scenario for FM radio (when you would finally find something that you could tolerate) was 1 hour. 1 hour of variety to stave off bordem and try to save your sanity. The effective range of the FM s…

I actually find Sirius frustrating for long road trips or commutes; most of the channels repeat their content every 6 or 7 or 8 hours. I often find the same programming on my home journey that was on when I was on the way in. Many news type channels like BBC endlessly repeat every hour. Having a pile of podcasts and audiobooks ready at hand makes long drives on ski trips much more tolerable to me... But I do keep the…

I find a streaming radio app to give the best variety of content. You can find any particular public radio show playing live somewhere in the US. And plenty of indie radio options as well.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#82

Post by freeone3000 »

have_faith wrote: post #67

Tangentially related. I hadn't heard of SiriusXM before so checked out their website. The homepage is a bit confusing and I'm not 100% sure what it is or why I need to pay separately if I listen inside or outside of a car? I get that it's a music streaming service of sorts just not sure what their angle is exactly. Spotify for instance doesn't care where I listen to the music I'm just paying to stream it wherever I w…

They run a constellation of satellites such that satellite receivers, mounted commonly in cars, can receive programming for music. The internet offering is a new thing.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#83

Post by simias »

mojuba wrote: post #76
bad_user wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get makers pay some nominal fee for hosting It doesn't work well and for obvious reasons. If you're an indie producer, you don't necessarily have the money to keep paying for hosting indefinitely. Instead you want to upload your work somewhere where it will always be available, for free. Vimeo charges producers instead of consumers and they are struggling — if you have a commercial website that has to serve content…

> This partially explains the success behind YouTube I thought the success of YouTube was largely due to their low bars for quality of content. Put simply, they allow all kinds of crap as long as it generates views. Vimeo's model is quality content from indie producers, actually they are similar to SoundCloud in some ways. Think about this: for example NASA has plenty of quality audio and video materials, where shoul…

I think YouTube's success is mainly that they were first, there were always free to use so there was no reason for anybody to look elsewhere. It's hard to compete against free and established services. You basically have to find a killer feature (and hope that the established service will be slow to copy it) or pay people to do the switch.

>Not everyone wants to be on the Internet's sewage system that's YouTube.

Yet basically everyone is. Content producers want to reach their audience, viewers want to find the content they care about.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#84

Post by morrbo »

golergka wrote: post #77
mojuba wrote: post #59

I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's one the very few places for indie music makers and DJs to showcase their work that otherwise may not necessarily be published via the official publishing channels. That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. The only problem with SoundCloud is that instead of fol…

> That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. Mixcloud does a much better job at this.

Mixcloud is great however the people in charge seem to be intent on killing the platform with bad ideas. I say this as a huge fan and a paying customer (premium user).

The android app is horrible. They used to have 10-30 minutes of cache time, now they have 0. You go under a tunnel, on the tube, whatever, and your stream cuts out. Also lots of UI bugs. This might have gotten better but I wouldn't know as I am on an older version of the app and refuse to upgrade due to no more caching.

You have to pay to rewind stuff apparently (I do pay so have never been impacted here)

Search is horrible, even now.

Web has some major bugs like randomly reloading half the page when you scroll down your feed and click listen to something. Old app has some ridiculous UI bugs, can't comment on the newer ones though.

Mixcloud select may have been done with the best intentions, but it's just a bunk idea. Half of my feed is now "select" stuff I can't listen to. The idea is you pay the individual artist and get premium features. But the select costs a fair bit of money, a lot more than id be willing to pay. Effectively, even as a paying user I'm now being paywalled. They should have kept the stuff free and heavily integrated with patreon or done a tipping style platform.

Sorry for the long rant but I figure this is a chance to actually have someone from team mixcloud potentially read some actual feedback that they're probably sheltered from normally.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#86

Post by briandear »

kevinherron wrote: post #9

Wait, what? I’m already surprised SiriusXM is still somehow around, let alone that they have $75 million to invest in another company and not that they’re taking $75 million to stay afloat...

They are a very big deal for aviation. My plane uses XM in-cockpit weather products.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#87

Post by seppin »

mojuba wrote: post #59

I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's one the very few places for indie music makers and DJs to showcase their work that otherwise may not necessarily be published via the official publishing channels. That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. The only problem with SoundCloud is that instead of fol…

> I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud.

It's the only music streaming service that takes discovery seriously, and it's the only one I use.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#88

Post by dna_polymerase »

liminal wrote: post #48

Soundcloud is the only music service I happily pay for even though I really don't need to. There aren't enough ads to justify giving them money, so it's really just because if they went away I'd lose access to all the best music

I really wanted them to succeed, and subscribed to their Go+ tier for years. This year I pulled the plug and went back to Spotify. I can't say I it miss too much. Of course, liking EDM I miss the live sets of many talented artists, but overall their service was just not worth it anymore. Their recommendation system is bullshit, since they have tons of duplicates in their database I would often get suggested music I already listen to uploaded by someone else. This gets more frustrating when one duplicate is unavailable in my country when another isn't and I have to curate the song myself. The biggest change to their app in the past few years was introducing darkmode (only a few weeks back).

Their last marketing mail was about some new feature for artists, that's when I finally pulled the plug. They lack any direction, they focus on the artist side of things, while their listeners get a mediocre music player.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#89

Post by UI_at_80x24 »

zymhan wrote: post #81
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find Sirius frustrating for long road trips or commutes; most of the channels repeat their content every 6 or 7 or 8 hours. I often find the same programming on my home journey that was on when I was on the way in. Many news type channels like BBC endlessly repeat every hour. Having a pile of podcasts and audiobooks ready at hand makes long drives on ski trips much more tolerable to me... But I do keep the…

I find a streaming radio app to give the best variety of content. You can find any particular public radio show playing live somewhere in the US. And plenty of indie radio options as well.

This happened long before "streaming audio" or 'apps' were a real thing. Also I live in Canada and drove in USA & Canada. The roaming charges were astronomical and didn't include data. The situation isn't much better now, but atleast I have USA data coverage upto 1GB.

Cellphone plan options in Canada are punitive and oppressive. Getting coverage in USA & Canada is painful.

When I was driving in the States, data-usage was measured in kB.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#90

Post by subhro »

briandear wrote: post #86
kevinherron wrote: post #9

Wait, what? I’m already surprised SiriusXM is still somehow around, let alone that they have $75 million to invest in another company and not that they’re taking $75 million to stay afloat...

They are a very big deal for aviation. My plane uses XM in-cockpit weather products.

But ADS-B is catching up and quickly. I understand there are a few additional layers in SXM and the resolution is better when looking at 200+NM. I find SXM weather to be kind of extortion because they use publicly available data and sell it just for packaging it nice.
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