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As a heavy EDM listener, Soundcloud is an amazing resource. Unfortunately, I see a variety of problems with the platform. * The company was founded eight years
by rndmize 10y ago
As a heavy EDM listener, Soundcloud is an amazing resource. Unfortunately, I see a variety of problems with the platform.
* The company was founded eight years ago but only added subscriptions to the artist side two years ago (I think?) and to the listener side in the last three months. Ads were added to the listener side a year ago, with no option to subscribe to remove them until the last few months. I basically stopped listening to Monstercat given how pervasive the ads were (every two tracks when skipping after a few seconds? Come on...)
* No way to buy music from them directly. Here's a recent release from Pegboard Nerds: https://soundcloud.com/monstercat/sets/pegboard-nerds-heartbit-remixes https://soundcloud.com/monstercat/sets/pegboard-nerds-heartb... . First five lines on the description: buy on iTunes, Bandcamp, Beatport, watch on Youtube, listen on Spotify. Not being able to sell music and have an online library of purchases seems like a lost opportunity.
* Speaking of libraries, you can like or repost songs. Beware though - if an artist removes a song or makes it private, it'll be gone from your lists. And I mean GONE - there's no record it existed, no track name, no artist, nothing. I only found out because I'm familiar enough with my likes that I noticed songs weren't playing in the right sequence. This is extraordinarily frustrating - at least if I bookmark music on Youtube, the artist and track name are in the bookmark, even if the video gets removed, making it possible to find/purchase elsewhere. Until a day arrives where I don't have to add the title of every track I like to a local text file, there's no way I'd sign up for their listener side subscription.
I've felt like Soundcloud could become a tremendous force in the music scene if they did things right - a one-stop shop for everything; uploading, sharing, listening, purchasing, collecting. Doesn't seem like they're pulling it off though.
- emdd 10y agoAnd their podcast service is so nice, especially integrating with Twitter cards. But, I don't know how long they can last.
- dublinben 10y ago>their podcast service is so nice As far as I can tell, there are no RSS feeds for SoundCloud pages. This fails the fundamental definition of what makes content a podcast.
- scott_hardy 10y agoA couple friends and I made this (UI still a work in progress) to solve this exact problem: https://www.soundcasts.net https://www.soundcasts.net
- lambertsimnel 10y agoRSS feeds for SoundCloud pages (or at least some of them) do exist. Here is an example http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:214090286/sounds.rss http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:214090286... They are difficult to find, though. I use many SoundCloud pages for which I wasn't able to find an RSS feed.