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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

by 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.
- Larrikin 7y ago
  When I discovered mixcloud, this was described as a "feature" that essentially turned them into radio which allowed them to have much more generous licensing terms with the labels. It allowed small DJs to essentially upload mixes containing none of their own music. At the time it made sense and may still be true to an extent, but SoundCloud is far more popular and seems to have become much more lax in their policy of long form audio. I've only lost one mix in my favorites in the past few years and that was the rare good mix I found consisting solely of popular rap. Pretty much everything else I listen to on there is EDM and most of the time they are DJs uploading sets they played for money at huge festivals. I only lose those when the artist removes music to force people to listen to their new stuff. In those situations it makes an easy filter for who to unfollow since if the new stuff was any good they wouldn't need to remove the old stuff.
  - senorjazz 7y ago
    > When I discovered mixcloud, this was described as a "feature" that essentially turned them into radio which allowed them to have much more generous licensing terms with the labels Fairly sure that was only applied to some locations.
jamil7 7y ago
I really wish they would open the API up and allow third party clients, more competition and choice there could only be a good thing for users.

by morrbo 7y ago

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.

Larrikin 7y ago
When I discovered mixcloud, this was described as a "feature" that essentially turned them into radio which allowed them to have much more generous licensing terms with the labels. It allowed small DJs to essentially upload mixes containing none of their own music. At the time it made sense and may still be true to an extent, but SoundCloud is far more popular and seems to have become much more lax in their policy of long form audio. I've only lost one mix in my favorites in the past few years and that was the rare good mix I found consisting solely of popular rap. Pretty much everything else I listen to on there is EDM and most of the time they are DJs uploading sets they played for money at huge festivals. I only lose those when the artist removes music to force people to listen to their new stuff. In those situations it makes an easy filter for who to unfollow since if the new stuff was any good they wouldn't need to remove the old stuff.
- senorjazz 7y ago
  > When I discovered mixcloud, this was described as a "feature" that essentially turned them into radio which allowed them to have much more generous licensing terms with the labels Fairly sure that was only applied to some locations.

jamil7 7y ago

I really wish they would open the API up and allow third party clients, more competition and choice there could only be a good thing for users.