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This is a perfect example of how strong software engineering from competitors can result in you getting completely left in the dust. YouTube and Spotify have gr

This is a perfect example of how strong software engineering from competitors can result in you getting completely left in the dust. YouTube and Spotify have great algorithms for suggesting new songs - I feel like when my current song is done, I have a really high chance of hearing another song that I've never heard, but will enjoy. This is not the case on SoundCloud, where I'm almost always jolted back to reality when the next song comes on.

phreeza 9y ago
Exactly this point came up in a conversation with non-technical friends recently, everyone agreed. The nice thing soundcloud has is the ability to host mixes, which can last hours.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  And that‘s exactly what they should have focused on. I never saw them as a service for listening to tracks and albums or storing my collection. It‘s not a Spotify or Apple Music competitor. It’s a great place for DJ mixes, sets and live recording, though I think Mixcloud is the better product - unfortunately I see way less engagement over there. That might change when Soundcloud goes down.
  - matclayton 9y ago
    Mixcloud founder here, thanks for the vote of confidence. One key difference is we internally measure success or engagement in terms of minutes listened not play counts, and actively optimise for this. So often the visible play metrics don't actually respresent true human engagement. It's something we're thinking about a lot internally right now, and we might start exposing it shortly. I suspect most people will be very surprised for the better when we do.
    - thirdsun 9y ago
      Nice to see you here. Don’t get me wrong - I agree that minutes played is a much better metric than play count - in fact I always wondered why Soundcloud wouldn‘t go a few steps further and not only show minutes listened, but also where those minutes were spent within your mix, like a heatmap over your upload‘s waveform to see which sections were most popular or where listeners stopped listening. However, regardless of the fact that you use different metrics, for me it feels much harder to find an audience at Mixcloud. It‘s not that I‘m very popular at Soundcloud, but the small circle of like-minded followers I found there doesn‘t seem to translate very well to Mixcloud. Again, that may change with Soundcloud‘s demise.
      - matclayton 9y ago
        That's fair and we're highly focussed on improving that this year. The groundwork is now laid, time to crunch out the features :)
    - tw352852 9y ago
      That is the same internal goal that SoundCloud has. Play counts is just what users want to see. All of SoundCloud's internal optimization is around listening time.
- cerved 9y ago
  The nice thing SoundCloud has is white-label releases
camus2 9y ago
Neither Youtube or Spotify make any real money. Recommendation algorithms are the least of Soundcloud's worries as the platform just doesn't have any real business plan and just can't play the "growth game" anymore. There is just no real money in selling access to or hosting digital music. Soundcloud used to be a place for DJs. They died when they tried to go mainstream instead of focusing on DJs and selling them services.
- phreeza 9y ago
  Spotify looses money because they have to pay massive royalties to the music industry. Hosting content that is not part of that oligopoly should in theory be feasible, but of course it doesn't attract the same amount of attention. I wouldn't say it is a foregone conclusion though.
- mbesto 9y ago
  > Youtube make any real money I hope you mean specifically on music, because that comment is laughable. > Recommendation algorithms are the least of Soundcloud's worries as the platform just doesn't have any real business plan and just can't play the "growth game" anymore. This 1000%
  - TillE 9y ago
    YouTube has considerable revenue, but as far as I can tell they're still unprofitable.
    - lawrenceyan 9y ago
      YouTube as of present day is profitable. To me, and I'm sure Google thinks the same too, the data they've amassed and are exponentially amassing far outweigh in value any notion of profits. This is about playing the long game, not focusing on quarterly earnings.
ams6110 9y ago
How do you get that to work? I'm not on Spotify, but I use YouTube (Red subscriber in fact) and I find the suggestions to be pretty bad. It just seems to suggest random songs in the same genre mixed with stuff I've listened to before. I generally don't subscribe to channels or upvote/downvote songs. Is that critical to getting good suggestions? I would have thought just listening history would be enough.
lqdc13 9y ago
I cannot comment on Spotify, but I pretty much dislike all Youtube recommendations. I get sometimes different version of the same song again followed by some other song that is also popular but has nothing to do with what I'm listening to followed by something else I "liked before" but obviously don't want to listen to since I already heard it many times. That is followed by a different version of the same song again finally eventually converging on pop music that I generally dislike. SoundCloud on the other hand sometimes recommends interesting things that I like but have never heard of. Other times, it recommends things that are completely unrelated and that I don't particularly like. However, they're still new/interesting.
- joatmon-snoo 9y ago
  My biggest gripe with YT recommendations is that songs I hit dislike on and always browse away from are constantly placed in my autoplay queue. There are some songs out there that I just hate and there's just no way for me to avoid them. I've never had this issue with Spotify - mostly because of how differently its recommendations work - and it's probably one of the biggest reasons I've abandoned YT for Spotify.
  - cerved 9y ago
    YT recommendations in general is pretty rubbish
    - nojvek 9y ago
      Can vouch for Spotify. Moved from Soundcloud subscription to spotify 10/month. High quality music, great collection and great recommendation. I kind of feel too much money and not a strong org structure destroyed sound cloud.
notyourwork 9y ago
> YouTube and Spotify have great algorithms for suggesting new songs Spotify recommendations are far from great. They crowd source based on popularity, Pandora's recommendation engine is far superior.
- smrq 9y ago
  My anecdata indicates the opposite, as far as quality of recommendations is concerned. Curious how matters of taste might mean that you can't accurately make sweeping generalizations like this.
  - notyourwork 9y ago
    Music preference is not something you can generalize to a group of people. For example, I may like one song from Taylor Swift but not anything else. You may be right for popular songs but where Pandora's genome project shines is recommending music you would never otherwise discover. If your suggestions are based on crowd sourced data like play count, your recommendations will be further encouraged by recommendations and thus become obsolete over time.
- jonknee 9y ago
  They do a lot more than that. I just looked at my Discover Weekly playlist and the second track is from someone with 5,500 monthly plays. That's not showing up anywhere based on popularity. I'd say about half the playlist is similarly sized artists.
pmlnr 9y ago
Yet they still don't even scratch what last.fm used to be when it came to recommendation.
pje 9y ago
this is really the dumbest possible take on the whole situation.

phreeza 9y ago

Exactly this point came up in a conversation with non-technical friends recently, everyone agreed. The nice thing soundcloud has is the ability to host mixes, which can last hours.

thirdsun 9y ago
And that‘s exactly what they should have focused on. I never saw them as a service for listening to tracks and albums or storing my collection. It‘s not a Spotify or Apple Music competitor. It’s a great place for DJ mixes, sets and live recording, though I think Mixcloud is the better product - unfortunately I see way less engagement over there. That might change when Soundcloud goes down.
- matclayton 9y ago
  Mixcloud founder here, thanks for the vote of confidence. One key difference is we internally measure success or engagement in terms of minutes listened not play counts, and actively optimise for this. So often the visible play metrics don't actually respresent true human engagement. It's something we're thinking about a lot internally right now, and we might start exposing it shortly. I suspect most people will be very surprised for the better when we do.
  - thirdsun 9y ago
    Nice to see you here. Don’t get me wrong - I agree that minutes played is a much better metric than play count - in fact I always wondered why Soundcloud wouldn‘t go a few steps further and not only show minutes listened, but also where those minutes were spent within your mix, like a heatmap over your upload‘s waveform to see which sections were most popular or where listeners stopped listening. However, regardless of the fact that you use different metrics, for me it feels much harder to find an audience at Mixcloud. It‘s not that I‘m very popular at Soundcloud, but the small circle of like-minded followers I found there doesn‘t seem to translate very well to Mixcloud. Again, that may change with Soundcloud‘s demise.
    - matclayton 9y ago
      That's fair and we're highly focussed on improving that this year. The groundwork is now laid, time to crunch out the features :)
  - tw352852 9y ago
    That is the same internal goal that SoundCloud has. Play counts is just what users want to see. All of SoundCloud's internal optimization is around listening time.
cerved 9y ago
The nice thing SoundCloud has is white-label releases

camus2 9y ago

Neither Youtube or Spotify make any real money. Recommendation algorithms are the least of Soundcloud's worries as the platform just doesn't have any real business plan and just can't play the "growth game" anymore. There is just no real money in selling access to or hosting digital music. Soundcloud used to be a place for DJs. They died when they tried to go mainstream instead of focusing on DJs and selling them services.

phreeza 9y ago
Spotify looses money because they have to pay massive royalties to the music industry. Hosting content that is not part of that oligopoly should in theory be feasible, but of course it doesn't attract the same amount of attention. I wouldn't say it is a foregone conclusion though.
mbesto 9y ago
> Youtube make any real money I hope you mean specifically on music, because that comment is laughable. > Recommendation algorithms are the least of Soundcloud's worries as the platform just doesn't have any real business plan and just can't play the "growth game" anymore. This 1000%
- TillE 9y ago
  YouTube has considerable revenue, but as far as I can tell they're still unprofitable.
  - lawrenceyan 9y ago
    YouTube as of present day is profitable. To me, and I'm sure Google thinks the same too, the data they've amassed and are exponentially amassing far outweigh in value any notion of profits. This is about playing the long game, not focusing on quarterly earnings.

ams6110 9y ago

How do you get that to work? I'm not on Spotify, but I use YouTube (Red subscriber in fact) and I find the suggestions to be pretty bad. It just seems to suggest random songs in the same genre mixed with stuff I've listened to before. I generally don't subscribe to channels or upvote/downvote songs. Is that critical to getting good suggestions? I would have thought just listening history would be enough.

lqdc13 9y ago

I cannot comment on Spotify, but I pretty much dislike all Youtube recommendations. I get sometimes different version of the same song again followed by some other song that is also popular but has nothing to do with what I'm listening to followed by something else I "liked before" but obviously don't want to listen to since I already heard it many times. That is followed by a different version of the same song again finally eventually converging on pop music that I generally dislike. SoundCloud on the other hand sometimes recommends interesting things that I like but have never heard of. Other times, it recommends things that are completely unrelated and that I don't particularly like. However, they're still new/interesting.

joatmon-snoo 9y ago
My biggest gripe with YT recommendations is that songs I hit dislike on and always browse away from are constantly placed in my autoplay queue. There are some songs out there that I just hate and there's just no way for me to avoid them. I've never had this issue with Spotify - mostly because of how differently its recommendations work - and it's probably one of the biggest reasons I've abandoned YT for Spotify.
- cerved 9y ago
  YT recommendations in general is pretty rubbish
  - nojvek 9y ago
    Can vouch for Spotify. Moved from Soundcloud subscription to spotify 10/month. High quality music, great collection and great recommendation. I kind of feel too much money and not a strong org structure destroyed sound cloud.

notyourwork 9y ago

> YouTube and Spotify have great algorithms for suggesting new songs Spotify recommendations are far from great. They crowd source based on popularity, Pandora's recommendation engine is far superior.

smrq 9y ago
My anecdata indicates the opposite, as far as quality of recommendations is concerned. Curious how matters of taste might mean that you can't accurately make sweeping generalizations like this.
- notyourwork 9y ago
  Music preference is not something you can generalize to a group of people. For example, I may like one song from Taylor Swift but not anything else. You may be right for popular songs but where Pandora's genome project shines is recommending music you would never otherwise discover. If your suggestions are based on crowd sourced data like play count, your recommendations will be further encouraged by recommendations and thus become obsolete over time.
jonknee 9y ago
They do a lot more than that. I just looked at my Discover Weekly playlist and the second track is from someone with 5,500 monthly plays. That's not showing up anywhere based on popularity. I'd say about half the playlist is similarly sized artists.

pmlnr 9y ago

Yet they still don't even scratch what last.fm used to be when it came to recommendation.

pje 9y ago

this is really the dumbest possible take on the whole situation.