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Not surprised given the climate and considering how mediocre of a platform SoundCloud is. I showed my friends back in 2011, we all thought it was a really cool

Not surprised given the climate and considering how mediocre of a platform SoundCloud is. I showed my friends back in 2011, we all thought it was a really cool way to share music. We played in a band together so it was a nice way to share rough tracks, still is. But Streaming is now dominant for music playback. It’s easier than ever for artists to publish themselves on Spotify and let’s not forget the 10 other SoundCloud-like platforms. What does the SoundCloud dev team even do, db administration, Recommendation ML, making sure iOS SoundCloud syncs with the webApp? These services are all getting outsourced. SoundCloud belongs to the 2000s era of start up trends. “Let’s share things with other people online and connect with each other” Whatever the latter meant. I read someone talk about how Facebook belongs to the old school of relational graph based social networking whereas TikTok has this ML user driven approach. SoundCloud feels like a graph, people don’t traverse anymore.

plasma_beam 4y ago
Not arguing the lack of progress on the platform, but I think usage varies depending on type of music. I use SoundCloud daily still, their stream function where I’m checking latest posts from artists and labels I follow. I listen to a lot of electronic music, and I listen to dj sets on sound cloud that aren’t posted elsewhere. I rely on it for new dj sets, and they’re still the best for that IMO.
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  I guess it doesn’t help my perspective that I’m heavily into 90s indie rock. Cloud rap wasn’t coined because the platform was a failure that’s for sure. I think the future of SoundCloud looks more focused on hip hop, EDM, and types of music that are often produced more consistently than one album at a time. But albums are an archaic concept, maybe all music will move towards more frequent syndication. I just hope they don’t end up like MySpace, whatever it is that they do.
cbarrick 4y ago
> What does the SoundCloud dev team even do? Prometheus [1] came out of SoundCloud. [1]: https://prometheus.io https://prometheus.io
Larrikin 4y ago
Spotify can not and will not ever offer DJ sets. SoundCloud is amazing for DJ sets. Some artists offer their live sets on YouTube, and some artists stream on twitch, but nearly every set gets put on SoundCloud. The only other similar offering I can think of is MixCloud which never got off the ground in a similar way. SoundCloud also similarly excels in allowing remixes without the red tape. I never had any goals of becoming a famous artist, but I did enjoy making some songs back in college. I even got good enough to have a few songs played in clubs. But they were all remixes of very famous songs that I never would have gotten clearance for or would have been impossible expensive for a student. Huge artists like Jay-Z have talked about amazing songs they've had to leave unreleased due to in ability to get sample clearance. I attribute not really knowing or liking The Beatles very much because their music is avoided like the plague because they almost never get clearance to sample their music.

plasma_beam 4y ago

Not arguing the lack of progress on the platform, but I think usage varies depending on type of music. I use SoundCloud daily still, their stream function where I’m checking latest posts from artists and labels I follow. I listen to a lot of electronic music, and I listen to dj sets on sound cloud that aren’t posted elsewhere. I rely on it for new dj sets, and they’re still the best for that IMO.

pipeline_peak 4y ago
I guess it doesn’t help my perspective that I’m heavily into 90s indie rock. Cloud rap wasn’t coined because the platform was a failure that’s for sure. I think the future of SoundCloud looks more focused on hip hop, EDM, and types of music that are often produced more consistently than one album at a time. But albums are an archaic concept, maybe all music will move towards more frequent syndication. I just hope they don’t end up like MySpace, whatever it is that they do.

cbarrick 4y ago

> What does the SoundCloud dev team even do? Prometheus [1] came out of SoundCloud. [1]: https://prometheus.io https://prometheus.io

Larrikin 4y ago

Spotify can not and will not ever offer DJ sets. SoundCloud is amazing for DJ sets. Some artists offer their live sets on YouTube, and some artists stream on twitch, but nearly every set gets put on SoundCloud. The only other similar offering I can think of is MixCloud which never got off the ground in a similar way. SoundCloud also similarly excels in allowing remixes without the red tape. I never had any goals of becoming a famous artist, but I did enjoy making some songs back in college. I even got good enough to have a few songs played in clubs. But they were all remixes of very famous songs that I never would have gotten clearance for or would have been impossible expensive for a student. Huge artists like Jay-Z have talked about amazing songs they've had to leave unreleased due to in ability to get sample clearance. I attribute not really knowing or liking The Beatles very much because their music is avoided like the plague because they almost never get clearance to sample their music.