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What SoundCloud created can never die

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41–50 of 56 posts

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#41
post #30
post #10

SoundCloud disappearing would be a shame. There's nothing that currently exists that replaces it. Consumer-oriented streaming platforms are a dime a dozen these days, sure, but there's no real alternative for a musician -oriented platform; specifically, a platform where musicians can connect with other musicians, with zero overhead for sharing music. Just upload and done. Unlike commercial platforms like Spotify, the…

Their platform is just so badly designed once you do pay them as a musician. I signed up for an electronic project I was working on and I found the entire thing incredibly confusing. The design, the naming of things, the way some things connected with other things and not others, it all felt like a mishmash. The last straw for me was when I couldn’t master a track. The plan included IIRC three masters per month. Afte…

The fact that they even have an AI mastering service--which, to be blunt, is an exploitative scam to bilk hobbyist/newbie musicians out of their money--just shows how much shit they've been throwing at the wall, hoping it sticks. Mastering services, distribution services (SoundCloud for Artists, which lets you also post on Spotify), making some tracks eligible for streaming payouts, Next vs Next Pro vs Go vs Go+ vs...

They've acted like a company on their last legs for a while. The Insights view is the most frustrating; they half-rolled it out a few years ago, sending out an apology email because it was half-baked and didn't have the same feature set as the old statistics viewer, but now they've removed the old one and the new Insights still sucks. Just smells of a half-completed project that no longer has the engineering or product support it needs to actually be good.

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#42
post #32

> The Berlin-founded company has maintained its relevance by embracing a simple ethos: come as you are. That’s made SoundCloud the for-everybody platform—one that embraces all genres, sexualities, religions, and definitions of music and art. By setting itself up as a hub for community-oriented music streaming, it’s become a kind of incubator for avant-garde sounds. SoundCloud is everybody’s underground. I find this k…

Well, the quote you mentioned said nothing about sexism or racism, you added that. So I think you should wonder why the references in that paragraph made you bring a whole gamut of "political" considerations you then deemed irrelevant in one swoop. The only one they said is "sexualities", and here again I would challenge your re-framing. "Embracing all sexualities" doesn't just mean "not being homophobic". Not active…

Trying not to put words in OP's mouth, but I definitely know people in real life with this attitude, who also get weirdly bristled by innocent mentioning of things like "sexualities" in businesses' PR/positioning pieces. If I were to open a cafe and mentioned somewhere in my Grand Opening PR that the cafe is "inclusive to all genders and races," I know real acquaintances who would absolutely complain to me that my business was "too political". It's weird that the mere act of affirming that your business is welcome to people has become politicized but, hey, welcome to 2024.

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#43

I remember when Soundcloud first launched and it was specifically aimed at musicians to encourage collaboration, so its nice that it still occupies that niche pretty well. “We both came from backgrounds connected to music,” co-founder Alex Ljung said in a recent interview with wired.com. “And it was just really, really annoying for us to collaborate with people on music — I mean simple collaboration, just sending tra…

I already posted this article on the previous SoundCloud thread last week, but it's worth mentioning that a string of decisions that SoundCloud made after their glory years of the late 00s lost them support from the very artists and DJs that originally made the site popular: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/21/15999172/soundcloud-busin...

Speaking only for myself, I canceled my paid account in 2014 after already not visiting for a year or two due to the spam problem and copyright strikes.

I am not deeply involved in making music any more, so I don't know where the hot spot for musicians to collaborate is today, but cloud storage is counted in the terabytes now so sharing projects, samples and stems is much less expensive than it used to be. Timestamped comments and being able to scrub back and forward without loading up your DAW is probably the main differentiator that SoundCloud offered, but I'm not sure that's as unique as it used to be either.

One weird site I saw linked on last week's thread was this one from Audacity's new owners: https://audio.com/ It's full of janky little samples and snippets that people have uploaded. It reminds me of the early days of musicians uploading whatever unfinished ideas to BBSes and newsgroups for feedback or just to feel like they weren't alone in the world. Artists will always find a way.

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#44
post #24

For the first decade or so that I used SoundCloud, music discovery was WORK - their recommendation engine wasn't great, and their search tools were limited, so you'd have to just kind of chase links through artists & commenters, and grind it out. Every couple weeks I would spend a few hours hunting for gems. Eventually I switched most of my listening to Spotify, on the strength of their recommendation engine, even th…

Music searching was work but music recommendation was second to only older YouTube.

Both of those platforms steered users in such a nuanced and strange way which platforms like Spotify and Apple Music couldn’t capture.

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#46
SoundCloud only became profitable recently by laying off about 30% of the staff. They never figured out how to make it work.

I seriously doubt anyone is going to buy it, even less for $1B which is the number that has been thrown around.

Of course the investors that put some $250M into it since 2017 or so want their ROI badly but who in their right mind would buy it?

Google, Meta, Spotify, etc could buy it without much effort but what would they get in return?

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m dying to build a new music app and it’s something I spend all my time thinking about. I have so many ideas wrt stems and lyrics but I’m personally not willing to take the risk of angering WMG or RIAA. Would love to have a discussion, email is in my bio.

Would be fun to chat...don't see your email in your bio though.

Ooops, I thought it was. It's in there now.

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the quote you mentioned said nothing about sexism or racism, you added that. So I think you should wonder why the references in that paragraph made you bring a whole gamut of "political" considerations you then deemed irrelevant in one swoop. The only one they said is "sexualities", and here again I would challenge your re-framing. "Embracing all sexualities" doesn't just mean "not being homophobic". Not active…

Trying not to put words in OP's mouth, but I definitely know people in real life with this attitude, who also get weirdly bristled by innocent mentioning of things like "sexualities" in businesses' PR/positioning pieces. If I were to open a cafe and mentioned somewhere in my Grand Opening PR that the cafe is "inclusive to all genders and races," I know real acquaintances who would absolutely complain to me that my bu…

It’s almost as if mentioning it, you’re implying that the majority of businesses close to you are not inclusive. If this is the case, go ahead and mention it to stand out.

Otherwise you’re just trying to get brownie points in how cool and progressive you are while solving your imagined problem.

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#49
post #4

This makes me sad. I use SoundCloud to listen to one genre only (progressive trance for when I'm programming) and its gotten so good at recommending me exactly what I like. On top of that DJ sets are top notch. There are many genres I like to listen to, but the result is a mix of all the things. It's quite rubbish to get a mix of very different genres spanning decades, which happens with Spotify all the time. And You…

share your playlist pls!

Here are some of my favorite sets, the Kai Lie one is the best imo. And the 'taking you higher' series has many more parts (the one here is my favorite)

https://soundcloud.com/perplexitymusic/perplexity-music-show...

https://soundcloud.com/user-668153210-253263600/newprogressi...

https://soundcloud.com/shane-c/progressive-trance-a

https://soundcloud.com/pineappledigitalmusic/melodic-progres...

https://soundcloud.com/weraveyou/sunsetsessions1

https://soundcloud.com/kai-lie/falling-star-compilation-4

https://soundcloud.com/fluidified/cosmic-energy-pt-2

https://soundcloud.com/mrsuicidesheep/taking-you-higher-part...

Re: What SoundCloud created can never die

#50

I am working on a new music platform. It is a travesty that SoundCloud and other artist-friendly platforms like Bandcamp are struggling and can't survive. Having used Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music (iTunes), YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Qobuz, etc over the past 20+ years, it seems like without a new approach we'll continue to lose choices in how we search for, discover, listen to, and interface with music - I ca…

Would love to know more about this project.

I been working on UX with the team at https://www.radiooooo.com and I believe there is a lot of space for new UI and discovery interactions that treat finding new music as a game.

There is an unspeakable ‘uncanny valley‘ quality that’d algo generated playlists create. Like the music is too similar too aligned, it sends my ears to sleep.

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