6 ms·

I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's one the very few places for indie music makers and DJs to showcase their work that otherwise

by mojuba 7y ago

I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's one the very few places for indie music makers and DJs to showcase their work that otherwise may not necessarily be published via the official publishing channels. That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. The only problem with SoundCloud is that instead of following the Spotify model, i.e. get listeners to pay for listening, they could have done it the other way around: get makers pay some nominal fee for hosting. Which they kind of did in the beginning but gradually drifted towards the listener-subscription model. As a paid music hosting service they'd at least provide an alternative for specific class of artists, i.e. those who make music for the love of it and want to be heard via unofficial channels. SC failed to become one. They've had some back and forth and experimentation with pricing and subscription models over the years but never settled at anything targeted clearly and unambiguously. The current offerings are confusing and inconvenient for all classes of users. There's now an all-time upload limit for non-paying makers, and ads for non-paying users. What's the point of this? Getting both makers and listeners pay you? Sounds like a poor plan to me, that leads to nowehere.

bad_user 7y ago
> get makers pay some nominal fee for hosting It doesn't work well and for obvious reasons. If you're an indie producer, you don't necessarily have the money to keep paying for hosting indefinitely. Instead you want to upload your work somewhere where it will always be available, for free. Vimeo charges producers instead of consumers and they are struggling — if you have a commercial website that has to serve content from somewhere, then sure, it's a great deal, but not if you're a hobbyist. By charging producers such services are basically shooting themselves in the foot — because if you don't attract producers, you won't get an audience either. Plus the ongoing costs (bandwidth and processing capacity) are generated by visitors and not producers. This partially explains YouTube's success — as a producer you can just upload to YouTube, it doesn't cost you anything and YouTube brings you the audience ;-)
- mojuba 7y ago
  > This partially explains the success behind YouTube I thought the success of YouTube was largely due to their low bars for quality of content. Put simply, they allow all kinds of crap as long as it generates views. Vimeo's model is quality content from indie producers, actually they are similar to SoundCloud in some ways. Think about this: for example NASA has plenty of quality audio and video materials, where should they upload it? SoundCloud and Vimeo would be the best choice and it's what they do. It's quality content not exactly "publishable" via music labels or television, and yet it's pretty good. Not everyone wants to be on the Internet's sewage system that's YouTube, and not everyone wants to go the costly publishing route. There has to be a niche for this type of media. I'm sure monetization can be figured out when there's clearly a market for it.
  - simias 7y ago
    I think YouTube's success is mainly that they were first, there were always free to use so there was no reason for anybody to look elsewhere. It's hard to compete against free and established services. You basically have to find a killer feature (and hope that the established service will be slow to copy it) or pay people to do the switch. >Not everyone wants to be on the Internet's sewage system that's YouTube. Yet basically everyone is. Content producers want to reach their audience, viewers want to find the content they care about.
    - muglug 7y ago
      > I think YouTube's success is mainly that they were first Actually, Vimeo's first videos[0] were uploaded a month before YouTube's[1]. [0] https://vimeo.com/15 https://vimeo.com/15 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
      - simias 7y ago
        Thank you for pointing it out, for some reason I thought that Vimeo was significantly more recent.
      - 7y ago
golergka 7y ago
> That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. Mixcloud does a much better job at this.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- morrbo 7y ago
  Mixcloud is great however the people in charge seem to be intent on killing the platform with bad ideas. I say this as a huge fan and a paying customer (premium user). The android app is horrible. They used to have 10-30 minutes of cache time, now they have 0. You go under a tunnel, on the tube, whatever, and your stream cuts out. Also lots of UI bugs. This might have gotten better but I wouldn't know as I am on an older version of the app and refuse to upgrade due to no more caching. You have to pay to rewind stuff apparently (I do pay so have never been impacted here) Search is horrible, even now. Web has some major bugs like randomly reloading half the page when you scroll down your feed and click listen to something. Old app has some ridiculous UI bugs, can't comment on the newer ones though. Mixcloud select may have been done with the best intentions, but it's just a bunk idea. Half of my feed is now "select" stuff I can't listen to. The idea is you pay the individual artist and get premium features. But the select costs a fair bit of money, a lot more than id be willing to pay. Effectively, even as a paying user I'm now being paywalled. They should have kept the stuff free and heavily integrated with patreon or done a tipping style platform. Sorry for the long rant but I figure this is a chance to actually have someone from team mixcloud potentially read some actual feedback that they're probably sheltered from normally.
  - Plyphon_ 7y ago
    > You have to pay to rewind stuff apparently This is true. It is also the worst piece of hostile-UX I've ever seen. I'd love to have seen the Product Designer and Product Manager tie this one back to revenue forecasts. Who knows, maybe its a huge converter? It just seems overly hostile to me, as if thats the only way they could think to increase revenue - instead of, you know, working on their core value proposition.
seppin 7y ago
> I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's the only music streaming service that takes discovery seriously, and it's the only one I use.
- mojuba 7y ago
  Exactly, I love their recommendations based on my likes, love The Upload section. I wonder what algorithms they use. They are pretty good.
  - nikisweeting 7y ago
    Their "The Upload" playlist is consistently the source of some of my favorite music on the internet, it almost never has a song I don't like. Whichever engineers worked on it deserve a raise.
    - seppin 7y ago
      Also https://hypem.com/popular https://hypem.com/popular is a fantastic interface (with a great mobile app too), it takes mostly from SC.
      - nikisweeting 7y ago
        HypeMachine is a great platform, I've never gotten super into using it though, not sure why.
- vonseel 7y ago
  Call me basic, but Spotify's algorithms for discovery are pretty damn good.
  - seppin 7y ago
    Soundcloud lets you focus on your favorite music by type, country, etc. https://soundcloud.com/charts/new?genre=deephouse&country=all-countries https://soundcloud.com/charts/new?genre=deephouse&country=al...
52-6F-62 7y ago
I swear SC is the only place I can find even a couple of Ethan Johns songs to stream while I'm at work. It's got its niche for sure.
erikpukinskis 7y ago
I really like Bandcamp as a “music publishing platform for independent artists”. It lets people listen for free, makes it easy to collect payments. I feel like they’ve taken the “slow but pure” approach to product development. Not growing super fast, or chasing revenue, but just making sure the core feature works for artists who are truly independent, and carefully expanding from there.
- mojuba 7y ago
  Bandcamp has an awfully out of date UI, no recommendation engine of any kind, overall ridiculously simplistic, plus their monetization model is closer to an indie label one. This is altoegther a different model and a different niche compared to SoundCloud.
  - samirsd 7y ago
    i'm working on a solution to this problem. it's called .mixtape - https://mixtape.ai https://mixtape.ai currently in beta but targeting an end of february launch
unlinked_dll 7y ago
The other issue with Spotify is that they had no answer for Dropbox, clyp.it or more recently, Bandlab. Back in the day if you wanted to collab with another producer, vocalist, rapper, whatever, SoundCloud was the quick and dirty way of sharing audio ideas and files in the browser. For larger projects you used Dropbox. Shame they tried to be internet radio and not a place and tool for content creators, like YouTube. They could have been the YouTube for audio, like podcasting.
- vonseel 7y ago
  The other issue with Spotify is that they had no answer for Dropbox, clyp.it or more recently, Bandlab. Um, those things are not an issue for Spotify; Spotify's product is not meant to be used by creators like Soundcloud and definitely not even in the same ballpark as Dropbox.
  - unlinked_dll 7y ago
    brain fart. Sub "soundcloud" for spotify.
hahamrfunnyguy 7y ago
Paid SoundCloud listener here. I value the service they provide and I am happy to pay for it. They could improve discovery options, so greater collaboration with Pandora would be a very good thing.
dzhiurgis 7y ago
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to pay for Soundcloud. I don’t need offline mode and it’s too expensive. I would pay for 320kbps streams tho (which I can get to be offline with youtube-dl).
ericskiff 7y ago
Wait - is this not still a large part of the SoundCloud model? I host a bunch of my 8bit tracks up there and give them away for free, but I have to pay $150 annually to do it (and yes I self host as well, but the soundcloud ecosystem drives a good deal of traffic my way, and I appreciate the service they provide.
thirdsun 7y ago
> I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's one the very few places for indie music makers and DJs to showcase their work that otherwise may not necessarily be published via the official publishing channels. That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. Soundcloud is indeed great for mixes and sets. They have valuable and unique content, yet the product remains very barebones and lackluster. Poor audio quality (still 128 kbps MP3 I think?), no concept of tracklists/timestamps and most importantly your playback position and queue isn't persistent. This is crucial for a medium used to listen to hours long mixes - as a user I expect to be able to pause and pick up my currently playing set later, on any device. The lack of this feature basically forces me to manage my playback queue in a different tool, like a note taking or todo app. I estimate that I have countless unfinished sets in my history that I simply forget to finish since once you close your browser window/app the content is basically off my radar. Imagine Netflix not saving your viewing progress - it's absurd. I think Mixcloud is the much better product - it just lacks the vast amount of content (they are gettign there) and numbers of listeners unfortunately. They also have a sound business/pricing model - although that may indeed be a barrier to listener growth.

by mojuba 7y ago

bad_user 7y ago

> get makers pay some nominal fee for hosting It doesn't work well and for obvious reasons. If you're an indie producer, you don't necessarily have the money to keep paying for hosting indefinitely. Instead you want to upload your work somewhere where it will always be available, for free. Vimeo charges producers instead of consumers and they are struggling — if you have a commercial website that has to serve content from somewhere, then sure, it's a great deal, but not if you're a hobbyist. By charging producers such services are basically shooting themselves in the foot — because if you don't attract producers, you won't get an audience either. Plus the ongoing costs (bandwidth and processing capacity) are generated by visitors and not producers. This partially explains YouTube's success — as a producer you can just upload to YouTube, it doesn't cost you anything and YouTube brings you the audience ;-)

mojuba 7y ago
> This partially explains the success behind YouTube I thought the success of YouTube was largely due to their low bars for quality of content. Put simply, they allow all kinds of crap as long as it generates views. Vimeo's model is quality content from indie producers, actually they are similar to SoundCloud in some ways. Think about this: for example NASA has plenty of quality audio and video materials, where should they upload it? SoundCloud and Vimeo would be the best choice and it's what they do. It's quality content not exactly "publishable" via music labels or television, and yet it's pretty good. Not everyone wants to be on the Internet's sewage system that's YouTube, and not everyone wants to go the costly publishing route. There has to be a niche for this type of media. I'm sure monetization can be figured out when there's clearly a market for it.
- simias 7y ago
  I think YouTube's success is mainly that they were first, there were always free to use so there was no reason for anybody to look elsewhere. It's hard to compete against free and established services. You basically have to find a killer feature (and hope that the established service will be slow to copy it) or pay people to do the switch. >Not everyone wants to be on the Internet's sewage system that's YouTube. Yet basically everyone is. Content producers want to reach their audience, viewers want to find the content they care about.
  - muglug 7y ago
    > I think YouTube's success is mainly that they were first Actually, Vimeo's first videos[0] were uploaded a month before YouTube's[1]. [0] https://vimeo.com/15 https://vimeo.com/15 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
    - simias 7y ago
      Thank you for pointing it out, for some reason I thought that Vimeo was significantly more recent.
    - 7y ago

golergka 7y ago

> That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. Mixcloud does a much better job at this.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
morrbo 7y ago
Mixcloud is great however the people in charge seem to be intent on killing the platform with bad ideas. I say this as a huge fan and a paying customer (premium user). The android app is horrible. They used to have 10-30 minutes of cache time, now they have 0. You go under a tunnel, on the tube, whatever, and your stream cuts out. Also lots of UI bugs. This might have gotten better but I wouldn't know as I am on an older version of the app and refuse to upgrade due to no more caching. You have to pay to rewind stuff apparently (I do pay so have never been impacted here) Search is horrible, even now. Web has some major bugs like randomly reloading half the page when you scroll down your feed and click listen to something. Old app has some ridiculous UI bugs, can't comment on the newer ones though. Mixcloud select may have been done with the best intentions, but it's just a bunk idea. Half of my feed is now "select" stuff I can't listen to. The idea is you pay the individual artist and get premium features. But the select costs a fair bit of money, a lot more than id be willing to pay. Effectively, even as a paying user I'm now being paywalled. They should have kept the stuff free and heavily integrated with patreon or done a tipping style platform. Sorry for the long rant but I figure this is a chance to actually have someone from team mixcloud potentially read some actual feedback that they're probably sheltered from normally.
- Plyphon_ 7y ago
  > You have to pay to rewind stuff apparently This is true. It is also the worst piece of hostile-UX I've ever seen. I'd love to have seen the Product Designer and Product Manager tie this one back to revenue forecasts. Who knows, maybe its a huge converter? It just seems overly hostile to me, as if thats the only way they could think to increase revenue - instead of, you know, working on their core value proposition.

seppin 7y ago

> I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's the only music streaming service that takes discovery seriously, and it's the only one I use.

mojuba 7y ago
Exactly, I love their recommendations based on my likes, love The Upload section. I wonder what algorithms they use. They are pretty good.
- nikisweeting 7y ago
  Their "The Upload" playlist is consistently the source of some of my favorite music on the internet, it almost never has a song I don't like. Whichever engineers worked on it deserve a raise.
  - seppin 7y ago
    Also https://hypem.com/popular https://hypem.com/popular is a fantastic interface (with a great mobile app too), it takes mostly from SC.
    - nikisweeting 7y ago
      HypeMachine is a great platform, I've never gotten super into using it though, not sure why.
vonseel 7y ago
Call me basic, but Spotify's algorithms for discovery are pretty damn good.
- seppin 7y ago
  Soundcloud lets you focus on your favorite music by type, country, etc. https://soundcloud.com/charts/new?genre=deephouse&country=all-countries https://soundcloud.com/charts/new?genre=deephouse&country=al...

52-6F-62 7y ago

I swear SC is the only place I can find even a couple of Ethan Johns songs to stream while I'm at work. It's got its niche for sure.

erikpukinskis 7y ago

I really like Bandcamp as a “music publishing platform for independent artists”. It lets people listen for free, makes it easy to collect payments. I feel like they’ve taken the “slow but pure” approach to product development. Not growing super fast, or chasing revenue, but just making sure the core feature works for artists who are truly independent, and carefully expanding from there.

mojuba 7y ago
Bandcamp has an awfully out of date UI, no recommendation engine of any kind, overall ridiculously simplistic, plus their monetization model is closer to an indie label one. This is altoegther a different model and a different niche compared to SoundCloud.
- samirsd 7y ago
  i'm working on a solution to this problem. it's called .mixtape - https://mixtape.ai https://mixtape.ai currently in beta but targeting an end of february launch

unlinked_dll 7y ago

The other issue with Spotify is that they had no answer for Dropbox, clyp.it or more recently, Bandlab. Back in the day if you wanted to collab with another producer, vocalist, rapper, whatever, SoundCloud was the quick and dirty way of sharing audio ideas and files in the browser. For larger projects you used Dropbox. Shame they tried to be internet radio and not a place and tool for content creators, like YouTube. They could have been the YouTube for audio, like podcasting.

vonseel 7y ago
The other issue with Spotify is that they had no answer for Dropbox, clyp.it or more recently, Bandlab. Um, those things are not an issue for Spotify; Spotify's product is not meant to be used by creators like Soundcloud and definitely not even in the same ballpark as Dropbox.
- unlinked_dll 7y ago
  brain fart. Sub "soundcloud" for spotify.

hahamrfunnyguy 7y ago

Paid SoundCloud listener here. I value the service they provide and I am happy to pay for it. They could improve discovery options, so greater collaboration with Pandora would be a very good thing.

dzhiurgis 7y ago

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to pay for Soundcloud. I don’t need offline mode and it’s too expensive. I would pay for 320kbps streams tho (which I can get to be offline with youtube-dl).

ericskiff 7y ago

Wait - is this not still a large part of the SoundCloud model? I host a bunch of my 8bit tracks up there and give them away for free, but I have to pay $150 annually to do it (and yes I self host as well, but the soundcloud ecosystem drives a good deal of traffic my way, and I appreciate the service they provide.

thirdsun 7y ago

> I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's one the very few places for indie music makers and DJs to showcase their work that otherwise may not necessarily be published via the official publishing channels. That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. Soundcloud is indeed great for mixes and sets. They have valuable and unique content, yet the product remains very barebones and lackluster. Poor audio quality (still 128 kbps MP3 I think?), no concept of tracklists/timestamps and most importantly your playback position and queue isn't persistent. This is crucial for a medium used to listen to hours long mixes - as a user I expect to be able to pause and pick up my currently playing set later, on any device. The lack of this feature basically forces me to manage my playback queue in a different tool, like a note taking or todo app. I estimate that I have countless unfinished sets in my history that I simply forget to finish since once you close your browser window/app the content is basically off my radar. Imagine Netflix not saving your viewing progress - it's absurd. I think Mixcloud is the much better product - it just lacks the vast amount of content (they are gettign there) and numbers of listeners unfortunately. They also have a sound business/pricing model - although that may indeed be a barrier to listener growth.