4 ms·

User generated content in the music business has been tried over and over again. MP3.com, MySpace, Garageband, and many others. The problem is that the consumer

by dano 11y ago

User generated content in the music business has been tried over and over again. MP3.com, MySpace, Garageband, and many others. The problem is that the consumer wants the hits, the names, the current hot artists. They don't want the long tail of unknown artists. Sure there are those who like to check out the new stuff and occasionally something pops. Soundcloud will eventually end up paying the same royalty rates as Spotify, Pandora, Rhapsody, Slacker, and all the rest thus eliminating this "SoundCloud has much better unit economics than Spotify." What is to stop Spotify from adding an artist upload feature? The macroeconomic factors on why all of the music delivery services are eventually going to fall in value has to do with Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon treating music as a valueless commodity. No one can charge more than iTunes for a song or streaming service. Apple sets the market price and operates their business at low margins due to ancillary revenue from hardware. If you're a music service and have no ancillary revenue to increase overall margins, you've got a classic business problem. The comparison to Youtube is also flawed because it doesn't mention that AdSense is the ancillary revenue that has kept YouTube afloat these many years. Furthermore, the content owners (copyright holders) will continue to raise prices and cut exclusive deals with different providers in order to maintain their cut of the pie. You see this with the content patchwork across Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and even Youtube Red. No player has all the licenses all the time. Music is a wonderful thing, but delivery is a commodity service where the players are competing on style and features. Content is ephemeral and a marketing illusion for the most part. If you want people to come, you have to have the stars.

twelve40 11y ago
Totally agree that delivery is a commodity. However, as a user, I ditched all services in favor of Soundcloud because of the discovery part. For example, Diplo and Tiesto post and repost almost weekly, combined with the rest of people I follow you get a stream of the very latest music of your taste, manually curated (reposted) by the top DJ's themselves. It's not just an "upload feature", its like Facebook for music: you hit play and get a tailored endless stream of awesomeness, 0 effort on your part. No need to hunt for and buy tracks one by one. No need to suffer through some unknown Pandora voodoo that turns up the same tracks of unknown recency, over and over. Just follow the people you like, and it will play the latest music you like, simple as that. I don't know if Soundcloud can manage to build a viable business, sometimes they make changes that piss off users and uploaders, and the current model doesn't look too lucrative. But for me as a user, the experience is night and day compared to the true commodity services (iTunes, Amazon, Google, Pandora, Spotify, etc etc), who I think will soon start to crack under margin pressure like Rdio, Mog and others.
- dano 11y ago
  I agree that Soundcloud is a great place to find unknown artists and new music, just as MP3.com was 16 years ago. Perhaps it can be larger than Spotify in terms of users and VC money that it can attract. None of these services will be valuable businesses as their revenue model is fundamentally flawed and the competition runs essentially the same business on much lower margins. The largest music streaming site on the web is Youtube and it charges nothing for the service, nor generally admits, that it holds this distinction. The consumer will pay, but very little, when there is a free alternative.
- volaski 11y ago
  I feel like you're overly being dramatic about "ditching all services". Do you literally only listen to music through soundcloud? If that is indeed the case, you're missing out on a lot of great music. Also as a listener of both Soundcloud and Spotify, I think Spotify's discovery has improved immensely to the point where it's much better than the filter bubble of a feed you create on soundcloud
  - recursive 11y ago
    I use soundbutt for at least 90% of music I listen to. I use spotify never. The fact is everyone is missing out on a lot of great music because there is more great music than any one person can listen to.
    - gohrt 11y ago
      Disable cloudtobutt on HN
      - jitl 11y ago
        I would think this is the premier venue for cloudtobutt usage.
    - collyw 11y ago
      Its upsetting that they listen to Justin Bieber in my office some days.
hamburglar 11y ago
On the indie side, delivery is worth actual money because their alternatives are to build their own e-commerce site (never goes well for nontechnical folks -- pay a bunch for a consultant to set up a site that never gets touched again, suffers bit rot, and probably falls over if you ever actually catch a big break) or go to iTunes and be a tiny undifferentiated speck in a sea of music, while paying 30% for the privilege. According to a couple reports I have seen, bandcamp is actually profitable. Maybe they won't be crushing the majors any time soon, but they seem to be proving there is a viable market for what small musicians do.
elcct 11y ago
> What is to stop Spotify from adding an artist upload feature? Well, to be fair it is quite easy to upload tracks to Spotify. You just have to use tools like Ditto Music (https://www.dittomusic.com/ https://www.dittomusic.com/)
thirdsun 11y ago
> User generated content in the music business has been tried over and over again. MP3.com, MySpace, Garageband, and many others. The problem is that the consumer wants the hits, the names, the current hot artists. They don't want the long tail of unknown artists. I think Soundcloud has a very different audience. In my opinion hardly anyone cares about the hits over there. And it isn't a requirement to feature the hits in order to be successful. Ask Bandcamp, they are doing quite well with their endless niche catalog. Personally, I consider myself a mostly digital crate digger who loves to explore obscure music and forgotten gems. Soundcloud is really helpful when trying to keep up with some of my favorite labels - an institution Spotify & Co. couldn't care less for. Soundcloud surely doesn't have everything but at least it fills some of the huge gaps, that Spotify, Apple or Google aren't interested in at all.

by dano 11y ago

twelve40 11y ago

Totally agree that delivery is a commodity. However, as a user, I ditched all services in favor of Soundcloud because of the discovery part. For example, Diplo and Tiesto post and repost almost weekly, combined with the rest of people I follow you get a stream of the very latest music of your taste, manually curated (reposted) by the top DJ's themselves. It's not just an "upload feature", its like Facebook for music: you hit play and get a tailored endless stream of awesomeness, 0 effort on your part. No need to hunt for and buy tracks one by one. No need to suffer through some unknown Pandora voodoo that turns up the same tracks of unknown recency, over and over. Just follow the people you like, and it will play the latest music you like, simple as that. I don't know if Soundcloud can manage to build a viable business, sometimes they make changes that piss off users and uploaders, and the current model doesn't look too lucrative. But for me as a user, the experience is night and day compared to the true commodity services (iTunes, Amazon, Google, Pandora, Spotify, etc etc), who I think will soon start to crack under margin pressure like Rdio, Mog and others.

dano 11y ago
I agree that Soundcloud is a great place to find unknown artists and new music, just as MP3.com was 16 years ago. Perhaps it can be larger than Spotify in terms of users and VC money that it can attract. None of these services will be valuable businesses as their revenue model is fundamentally flawed and the competition runs essentially the same business on much lower margins. The largest music streaming site on the web is Youtube and it charges nothing for the service, nor generally admits, that it holds this distinction. The consumer will pay, but very little, when there is a free alternative.
volaski 11y ago
I feel like you're overly being dramatic about "ditching all services". Do you literally only listen to music through soundcloud? If that is indeed the case, you're missing out on a lot of great music. Also as a listener of both Soundcloud and Spotify, I think Spotify's discovery has improved immensely to the point where it's much better than the filter bubble of a feed you create on soundcloud
- recursive 11y ago
  I use soundbutt for at least 90% of music I listen to. I use spotify never. The fact is everyone is missing out on a lot of great music because there is more great music than any one person can listen to.
  - gohrt 11y ago
    Disable cloudtobutt on HN
    - jitl 11y ago
      I would think this is the premier venue for cloudtobutt usage.
  - collyw 11y ago
    Its upsetting that they listen to Justin Bieber in my office some days.

hamburglar 11y ago

On the indie side, delivery is worth actual money because their alternatives are to build their own e-commerce site (never goes well for nontechnical folks -- pay a bunch for a consultant to set up a site that never gets touched again, suffers bit rot, and probably falls over if you ever actually catch a big break) or go to iTunes and be a tiny undifferentiated speck in a sea of music, while paying 30% for the privilege. According to a couple reports I have seen, bandcamp is actually profitable. Maybe they won't be crushing the majors any time soon, but they seem to be proving there is a viable market for what small musicians do.

elcct 11y ago

> What is to stop Spotify from adding an artist upload feature? Well, to be fair it is quite easy to upload tracks to Spotify. You just have to use tools like Ditto Music (https://www.dittomusic.com/ https://www.dittomusic.com/)

thirdsun 11y ago

> User generated content in the music business has been tried over and over again. MP3.com, MySpace, Garageband, and many others. The problem is that the consumer wants the hits, the names, the current hot artists. They don't want the long tail of unknown artists. I think Soundcloud has a very different audience. In my opinion hardly anyone cares about the hits over there. And it isn't a requirement to feature the hits in order to be successful. Ask Bandcamp, they are doing quite well with their endless niche catalog. Personally, I consider myself a mostly digital crate digger who loves to explore obscure music and forgotten gems. Soundcloud is really helpful when trying to keep up with some of my favorite labels - an institution Spotify & Co. couldn't care less for. Soundcloud surely doesn't have everything but at least it fills some of the huge gaps, that Spotify, Apple or Google aren't interested in at all.