I find it a near-perfect solution for hosting, presenting and sharing music - and of course for checking out stuff by others, like the stuff coming from the renoise community.
seems like 99% percent of the people here are using SC.
However, my impression is that SoundCloud is still extreeemely dominated by producers, artists, djs and musicians… and not the actual LISTENERS.
what about you, is this your impression as well?
do you think it could be because SC is still quite new, and fans tend to search myspace and youtube for music instead?
or is it because Spotify (and alike) dominates the streaming revolution … why should people bother checking out “non-commercial” music by hobbyists, when they find all the “real” music they will ever need, through Spotify for free?
and could it partly be because the techy waveform-based look of SoundCloud don’t appeal enough to the average non-musician visitor?
or, am I wrong, maybe there’s a bunch of listerens and fans using soundcloud, but few of them bother to create an account, i dunno.
I’m interested in your thoughts on this… do you think SoundCloud will grow BIG and be the one-stop for new music? if no, why not?
i think it’s very exciting to see where the whole music industry is heading, how it’s constantly changing…
in my opinion SoundCloud deserves all the best, it’s killer service I think. long live
from my point of view, things are always like that with sites that offer non-commercial artists the chance to present their stuff.
those sites are weakly frequented by non-artist people - it’s the same with sites that offer (e.g.) dj-mixes from anyone. artists are among artists, with a few exceptions of course.
why is it like that? in my opinion, the average listener doesn’t care about non-commercial artists. when he listens to music, he wants to listen to the best music available which is assumed to be found in the commercial department.
and as “commercial” for most people doesn’t imply “paying for it”, there isn’t any difference between the two for most listeners.
besides that, for some people it feels awkward to listen to music nobody else seems to listen to - or at least, nobody else he/she knows listens to.
generally i think that there is also simply way too much music for way too few listeners available.
everyone and his mum seems to be a producer nowadays - things have turned out to be way too simple in order to produce music. you don’t need a shitload of money anymore to obtain tools and equipment before you can start, like it has still been the case in the 1990’s.
in consequence we have a “market”, be it commercial or non-commercial, which is totally over-saturated with new electronic music every day and hour.
take alone the 100.000 different electronic 24h radio stations… why should the average listener care about browsing through seperate tracks by unknown artsits on sites like SC when he can simply tune into one of those stations and get satisfied?
Soundcloud is big, not sure how many normal people go to it over the likes of MySpace, but probably better for other artists and labels.
One of the main problems with it is that the Search feature sucks! My name is kazakore, as it is just about everywhere, you put in kaza kore and it wont find me. Wont find a single person! Should at least find everybody with kaza and everybody with kore in their name and list them in some relative manor.
Also a suggested listening, for people who don’t use, would be useful. Sure you can find somebody you like then either click on people they are following or their favourites but this may not be instantly obvious to a lot of people.
If people know what they want I would say Youtube, followed by Spotify are probably first routes of call. Hopefully Soundcloud is more for people looking for something new.
If you want to use Soundcloud to promote yourself, you cannot rely on people visiting the site, searching for artists/genres, etc. It’s just not what it is for.
The way forward is to embed your tracks in forums, on Facebook and other social media sites, and everywhere else you can plug/spam your stuff (this forum too, of course).
Soundcloud is just one potential promotion channel out of many. Personally, I think people who don’t make music should not create Soundcloud accounts. It’s good to have a place for producers and musicians only.
The brilliant innovation for soundcloud is the ease with which it integrates with the rest of your online experience. It’s not meant to be an experience of its own, unless you’re a producer.
indeed. many good points here people.
yup, gotta take it for what it is. will be exciting to see what’s coming of new features and stuff though.
right now i’m just lovin it, finally an ad-free and well-functioning place to present one’s muzik.
I used a looong time a couple of years ago planning my own “supersite” for my music, and actually started building it,
but I don’t know if I really need to finish it, as soundcloud does the job perfectly fine, at least for now.
not the same one could say about myspace
true. and even if that’s really a good thing, it can be quite frustrating at times… i’m sure everyone is feelin that.
only thing to do, is to keep tracking, keep going, and try to not drown completely out there, amongst the quadrazillion producers
luckily, and hopefully, we’re doing it because we love it, and not because we’re expecting the big breakthrough, I guess that’s a phenomena belonging more and more to the 90s when it comes to instrumental based electronic music. Muchos respect to the pioneers though, either your name is Richard D. James, Orbital, Laurent Garnier or Sash!
in my opinion Soundcloud is one of those things a search option isn’t really needed, as most of the time I end up there listening to something it’s because someone put an embed somewhere, or I noticed someone who is friended by the person I’m listening to.
the only problem I have with soundcloud, is the popup comments.
When I’m trying to skip to different parts of a tune, they always get in my way.
If I’m actually paying attention to what I’m doing there I never listen start to finish first, I always skip through first to see if it’s something I want to listen to, if it is then I listen start to finish.
Too much music to waste time listening to something you don’t like.
Agree. Soundcloud really needs hide comment by default feature. When there are hundreds of comments “wooah” and “raw” I won’t give a damn for any of them.
sure, playing live and making real-life connections is extremely important if you’re goal is to “make it”, but even then you still need a good place to present everything online. there’s a lot of people who rarely goes to live shows, and instead of spreading word on the street, they spread your stuff through sharing, blogging, playlisting and whatnot. i dare say that is equally essential these days.
