Is Soundcloud still the best option for posting One-Synth-Challenge tracks?

[Hanz Meyzer]

Ok, Richard, you might start a voting then here?

[Jace-BeOS]

Also upload with Safari does not seem to work.

Are you f**king kidding me? That’s an automatic “NO” for me using Audiomack, then.

I hate using multiple browsers. I had to turn to Firefox for the first time in MONTHS because of GoDaddy’s shitty payment configuration forms having a broken ReCaptcha and their support didn’t give a shit (“use a private tab”, which didn’t work; “use another browser”, which I don’t want to do!! Luckily an older version of Firefox worked from my Snow Leopard partition).

[Jace-BeOS]

Too late.. deleted all my tracks there. Won't be returning.

Yeah same. Feels like they have no idea how to actually make the site profitable and create features people want to pay for. I mean it has barely changed in the year since they ran out of money last time? I would be seriously surprised if they make it through next year.

When the site was designed for content CREATORS, I would’ve eventually paid to host my music there. Since they went with “designed to compete with mass market consumer streaming”, I have only kept using it because it’s free and well entrenched.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Actually, since the KVR-OSC voting page is based on the soundcloud API, it might be the best idea to stay soundcloud now. End of discussion, close this thread?

[Tj Shredder]

I guess that would make sense....

[574X]

"Disappointing frankly. When are those idiots going to learn a business needs to make money to survive."

Boy if only all those people with startups knew this, maybe most of them wouldn't fail in the first year.


Considering countless serious musicians are somewhere near homeless, awaiting their one lucky break to be exploited, you have a couple options of how to spend that last day of the month’s food money.

The cost of soundcloud pro is actually greater than most music distribution service like seedy baby, tunic ore, destroyed kid, routenote, aded.us, etc, which would put your music on all major commercial platforms for sale, and auto video upload to social media (youtube).

Heck there are even free music distribution services like Amuse.io.
Boy, how do they eat?

Actually, since the KVR-OSC voting page is based on the soundcloud API, it might be the best idea to stay soundcloud now. End of discussion, close this thread?

I can appreciate the effort that went into creating Soundcloud itself, and the voting page, but we're actually not here because of either of those systems.
We're here to make a track with one synth, as a community.

That being said, there are smarter things to do with the finished product than leave it in an online graveyard where it may never be heard again.

[Calenberger]

A long time ago I migrated my tracks and albums to Bandcamp.
Soundcloud is only my clip board for posting sound snippets for collaborations, competitions and so on...

[bulevardi]

Never heard about Audiomack before... however, there are so many platforms to put your work on nowadays.

I'm on SoundCloud and distribute via Spotify/YouTube aswel... but with the revenue of these things you can't buy a single beer.
Some people told me Bandcamp is best for revenue... years ago I was on that platform and there wasn't anything moving, no plays, no sells, no follows, nothing at all. But last week I've put some of my older works on it again. Give it another chance.

There's aswel Drooble, a social platform to meet people and get in the spotlights more. Same as NoiseOfDreams where you can get your music into playlists by curators.
There's aswel the blockchain music industry: MusiCoin and Choon, where you can earn tokens which you can hopefully exchange into bitcoins/ethereums or other currencies later on. The value MusiCoin pays is a lot higher than Spotify etc... but I haven't found a way to exchange it to other values to be able to cash out, yet.

So yes, so many platforms... not even talked about forums, FB, IG, ... and being social on these things means a full time job, means no time to actually create new stuff

[Mushy Mushy]

"Disappointing frankly. When are those idiots going to learn a business needs to make money to survive."

Boy if only all those people with startups knew this, maybe most of them wouldn't fail in the first year.

You count Soundcloud as a startup?

[e-crooner]

Isn't any newly founded company a startup these days?

I would not opt for one of those tiny services, which most people have never heard of. They will likely disappear again, so you have to move your stuff to a new service.

[Mushy Mushy]

Isn't any newly founded company a startup these days?

You consider 11 years newly founded?

Launched‎: ‎October 2008; 11 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundCloud

[e-crooner]

Isn't any newly founded company a startup these days?

You consider 11 years newly founded?

Launched‎: ‎October 2008; 11 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundCloud

Well, it is not newly founded then, so I don't see any contradiction.
I was generally referring to the term startup, which seems to be used as a synonym for new company these days.

[Mushy Mushy]

Isn't any newly founded company a startup these days?

You consider 11 years newly founded?

Launched‎: ‎October 2008; 11 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundCloud

Well, it is not newly founded then, so I don't see any contradiction.
I was generally referring to the term startup, which seems to be used as a synonym for new company these days.

Yeah so my argument was that if they've not worked out how to monetize the platform by now I don't hold out much luck. That said, they must be praised for their tenacity.

[e-crooner]

There are good services that don't make money. The Telegram messenger for instance. Services run by wealthy idealists

I don't like SC, their embedded player doesn't even have a volume control.

[4damind]

Never heard about Audiomack before... however, there are so many platforms to put your work on nowadays.

I'm on SoundCloud and distribute via Spotify/YouTube aswel... but with the revenue of these things you can't buy a single beer.
Some people told me Bandcamp is best for revenue... years ago I was on that platform and there wasn't anything moving, no plays, no sells, no follows, nothing at all. But last week I've put some of my older works on it again. Give it another chance.

The problem with Soundcloud are the missing groups.
It was a free and easy way to reach more people and get new fans at the same time.
Yes, you can advertise your music on Soundcloud for some time now, but this only applies to users selected by Soundcloud with a lot of followers. This makes Soundcloud as a marketing platform for their own music completely uninteresting for most people. So it's just a pure hosting platform, advertising and new fans have to be found on other platforms like Facebook.

But... that's no different with other platforms like Bandcamp! Yes, there is a shop integrated and you can just sell the songs... but in the end people don't automatically come to Bandcamp. You have to draw attention to yourself somewhere else as well.
I have some sales on Bandcamp but not because people found me there by chance. Most of the buyers have heard my songs on an internet radio, others know me from ReverbNation because I've often been the No. 1 there - and then probably googled or found the provided links and ended up on Bandcamp.

Spotify is something else. You can't just upload private tracks there and sell or stream them (at least that's always been the case until now). It's not a hosting platform but just another sales channel for songs you have licensed to a label.

Summarized: For hosting tracks or snippets Soundcloud/Hearthis etc. is great. But you don't get new listeners, fans or sales automatically. Upload songs and wait for something to happen automatically? You can wait a long time