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SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

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Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#81

Post by torbit »

Futurebot wrote: post #59
dominotw wrote: post #46

I used to use soundcloud all the time but switched to 'Discover weekely' on Spotify, like the author of the article. Spotify hit it out of park with Discover weekly. One downside of spotify is still discoverability, discover weekly doesn't introduce you to completely new kinds of music, it sticks to what you already like. You are on you own to introduce randomness into spotify's discovery algorithms. I think Rdio had…

Agree completely. Rdio did a much better job with music discovery, but they were limited by selection. Soundcloud doesn't have typical discovery features, but the ones they do have are quite good. Here's how I find good (relatively unknown/esoteric) music there: - Follow good aggregator accounts. These repost new music regularly, which appears in one's timeline. - Follow good regular accounts and play their "likes."…

Thanks for the tip. I used rdio, currently spotify, and pandora. My method in finding songs was going to Pandora and adding songs I loved from their to spotify. Pandora seems to be great at finding similar sounding songs to what I request.

The whole finding people to follow is what is the problem for me. It takes time finding accounts to follow. Friends dont have similar taste in music. Apple has the right idea in picking songs/artist you like before you get to start the service so you get something you like in your feed.

someone make an app to connect users to awesome playlists based on songs/genre/and more

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#82

Post by joshstrange »

oldmanhorton wrote: post #42

This would be appealing if the Soundcloud apps (including web) werent so atrocious. Navigating through your collection on Android is a mess, and the webapp shows as few as 2 tracks on a full laptop screen (while eating up gigabytes of RAM after only casual listening). I still love how the webapp "shuffle" mode will only shuffle through the songs already loaded by the client, so its just a mix of your most recent 25 o…

The iOS app (last I used it, 1-2 months ago) was trash as well. Constant issues with buffering, no offline, crashing all the time. I use Mixcloud exclusively now and while it doesn't have offline either it works 1000x better and has more of what I really want.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#83

Post by snickmy »

6stringmerc wrote: post #78
snickmy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What scares me the most is the bureaucracy that apple has in place. It takes about 8 weeks to get a content live in Apple music. No matter what sort of content. On Soundcloud it takes about 8 seconds (well maybe 8 minutes if you have a slow connection). Also, with 175M users, vs the 30M of Apple, and over 7 years of exclusive content, I don't see Apple getting ahead too fast.

Well I know Apple has that turnaround potential - up to 16 days I think is the wording - but I've had very good success with 24-48 hour turnaround time on most of my material. I'd have to double check, but your point is a good one. Spotify, Amazon, Tidal, Google, YouTube all have the content up within 24 hours, and some even quicker it seems. If the lag is a bit of an inconvenience I understand, but I find the result…

Correct. Spotify has an optimistic scheduler that sometimes swings under 2hours for point to point ingestions. Google Play is fast too.

I'd love to find out more about user adoption of all this players in about 6 months. As you correctly point out the next big technical challenge is having a unified delivery system (without any additional cuts, so no aggregators pls).

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#84

Post by snickmy »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #75
snickmy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f kup 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.

>> "I can't remember any service in the music industry that started from day one World Wide." I believe Apple music covered quite a lot of countries. I think at least some part of the service hit nearly all of them. I'm fine with launching in one country but at least give a timeline and for one of Europe's leading startups to launch a product US only is a bit of a kick in the teeth. I understand it but it just feels…

Apple Music was in 6 countries for the first month, then rolled out to 31. And it's still not targeting some major asian market.

I agree with you PR has a long way to go on on the Soundcloud side. At least a rollout list could have been included

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#85

Post by 6stringmerc »

cageface wrote: post #19
sarreph wrote: post #4

I was really hoping that they wouldn't have to pivot into competing with Spotify (somewhat indirectly, although that is TBD depending on what deals they've signed). Here's hoping that the mention of an indie library hints towards a more interesting slant on what exactly subscribers get access to. For example, it would be cool if there was a way to monetise un-signed or newly-signed artists rather than mainstream Spot…

Bandcamp covers that territory pretty well now.

Honestly I don't see Bandcamp as really doing more than filling a niche for artists who refuse to be on Spotify and/or don't know how to get into the 'major' digital outlets like Spotify, iTunes, Google, etc. It's a different ecosystem with all the same 'quality' issues as SoundCloud but not the same social interaction type stuff. I'm not trying to knock it, but I don't see it as a major player outside of a really indie circle (re: critics, obsessives) and not quite the casual listener(s).

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#86

Post by snickmy »

6stringmerc wrote: post #80
snickmy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Fair counter and I was being a bit more tongue in cheek, sorry about that if it came off as sort of ignorant. I agree these deals are massive to construct, and the back-end has to be really interesting from a tech / rights standpoint. It has been, without a doubt, one of the biggest riddles for the instiutional players (re: rights & revenue). Again, sort of trying to be joking about the subject, but I bet it's a lot…

I think, and I hope there is going to be a room for compromise there.

If they'll manage to tune their recommendation and discovery system in the right direction, they will be an appealing platform for both indies and majors.

Indies can finally get a prime time exposure within the major content. If you sound like taylor swift, and your lyrics are about breaking up with every possible person on earth, I think you should deserve a spot in an automatic generated 'San Valentine's day Single' along with her.

Majors can have a far better social layer that as it is today no one else has been able to create (Apple Ping anyone?). Soundcloud can offer that millennial generation engagement in a pure music context that so far has been lacking everywhere else. And Majors love millennials :)

I'm not saying it's an easy position to be in, and also, I wasn't myself that faithful about all this would have played out for SoundCloud, but to be honest, is an exciting time for the music industry.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#87

Post by alistproducer2 »

Not that I'm opposed to Soundcloud charging money, but I've been concerned with what happens to all that cool music if/when the business model fails.

I've been dreaming up a way to use ipfs, ethereum, and other distributed tech to create a user-owned, cryptocurrency sustained soundcloud that would persist.

for anyone interested, I've got a rough use case disagram here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4gkEhfnwSVBZDE5TGtSUFlmYWc...

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#88

Post by alistproducer2 »

Not that I'm opposed to Soundcloud charging money, but I've been concerned with what happens to all that cool music if/when the business model fails.

I've been dreaming up a way to use ipfs, ethereum, and other distributed tech to create a user-owned, cryptocurrency sustained soundcloud that would persist. for anyone interested, I've got a rough use case disagram here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4gkEhfnwSVBZDE5TGtSUFlmYWc...

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#89

Post by pmilla1606 »

tedmiston wrote: post #66
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.

The price difference between in-app (ios) vs. web is due to Apple's 30% fee for in-app purchase.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/8/8913105/spotify-apple-app-s...

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