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Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

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Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#11

Post by drcongo »

naltroc wrote: post #9

Longtime soundcloud user here (creator and consumer, pro subscriber). Not excited about this news but also a good time to share about Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/ This site has shockingly few ads (feels like one per week) and lets you stream complete mixes. You won't find single tracks here. For most music consumers though, mixes are probably what you didn't know you needed anyway.

I love Mixcloud (creator, heavy consumer, and pro subscriber). I never really understood the USP of SoundCloud, for mixes Mixcloud beats it hands down, for single tracks audio.com beats it all ends up despite being very beta. SoundCloud's USP seems to be "it's just about bearable to use in place of audio.com and mixcloud".

Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#12

Post by pluc »

lakomen wrote: post #2

Enshittification is the word of the year 2023. I wonder how enshittifed SoundCloud will become (it pretty much already is, but there's room for more). Who will buy it? Who would? Technically it's great IMHO. But when someone pays 1 billion currency they will want to extract at least the same amount out of this service.

Their API and developer support is atrocious. Their dev team has been like two people for the last 5 years.

Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#13

Post by jasonjayr »

doublerabbit wrote: post #8

First bandcamp and now soundcloud. It's looking bleak for music services. I use soundcloud as my sole music provider.

I'm in the same boat.

I don't even care about the ads from SoundCloud, even if they are repetitive, there's a lot of genres of music I enjoy that seem to have an epicenter on SoundCloud that I have not been able to find elsewhere, that's as easy to listen to + discover.

Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#14

Post by tempodox »

xnx wrote: post #7

YouTube wouldn't be the worst company to acquire SoundCloud. YouTube is already trying to gain some mind/market-share from Spotify. YouTube is already home to lots of non-label music and remixes and has most (all?) of the social/commenting features that SoundCloud has.

Oh no!

Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#15

Post by CrypticShift »

throwaway290 wrote: post #10
naltroc wrote: post #9

Longtime soundcloud user here (creator and consumer, pro subscriber). Not excited about this news but also a good time to share about Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/ This site has shockingly few ads (feels like one per week) and lets you stream complete mixes. You won't find single tracks here. For most music consumers though, mixes are probably what you didn't know you needed anyway.

How about producers?

Mixcloud fingerprints audio to pay royalties to the artists whose tracks get played [1] (if that's what you're asking)

[1] https://www.mixcloud.com/mixcloud/posts/how-we-pay-creators-...

Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#16

Post by alisonatwork »

doublerabbit wrote: post #8

First bandcamp and now soundcloud. It's looking bleak for music services. I use soundcloud as my sole music provider.

I don't really see a decline in Bandcamp yet. It was great when it launched and is still great today, regardless of its current ownership.

I'm surprised people still stuck with SoundCloud, to be honest, especially after they betrayed the very DJs and producers who had made the service popular in the first place. I canceled my paid account ~10 years ago and never looked back.

Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#17

Post by jorvi »

Just logged into my dormant SoundCloud to check the activity of a bunch of friends and acquaintances.

Looks like most user activity (liking tracks, add to playlist, etc) steeply dropped off ~13-11 years ago, and I see virtually no one active after ~7 years ago.

Not sure what the cause of that is..

Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#18

Post by brodock »

It's amazing how SoundCloud had "everything" and they threw away. They had the unique Indy artists, they had the DJs and music producers, and they opted to move to compete with Spotify on a money loosing bet, without putting the effort to build the Player in at least every single platform supported.

They did even more harm to themselves by blocking open source players that were doing "their work for free".

If there is one big mistake they did early on was to block API access. The other one was to bet on "record labels contract" rather then becoming the source for Originals.

Re: Music streaming service SoundCloud tunes up for sale

#20

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

alisonatwork wrote: post #16
doublerabbit wrote: post #8

First bandcamp and now soundcloud. It's looking bleak for music services. I use soundcloud as my sole music provider.

I don't really see a decline in Bandcamp yet. It was great when it launched and is still great today, regardless of its current ownership. I'm surprised people still stuck with SoundCloud, to be honest, especially after they betrayed the very DJs and producers who had made the service popular in the first place. I canceled my paid account ~10 years ago and never looked back.

Yeah, agreed on thus-far-lack-of-decline for Bandcamp.

However, always important to note that there are different POVs on such things:

  * customers
  * musicians
  * employees
  * partners
I only know that I see no change as a customer, have not been notified of changes as a musician, and sense that it's probably worse for employees.
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