Any Alternatives To Soundcloud ?

[Simon Darveau]

Well it seems that Soundcloud may bite the dust this year due to lawsuits from the big players ...

 

Most of us are using this site to post our songs here 

 

Any good alternatives out there ?

[TapperMike]

I'd consider youtube. It takes little to no time to drop an image on top of an audio file and make it a movie.

On the other hand I've got plenty of issues with youtube that has stopped me cold from uploading any content. Daily Motion and Vimeo are better for monetizing your work. And less prone to arbitrary takedown notices which it seems any troll or wigged out algorithm can produce.

Everything costs money including bandwidth. For a time my company was working on it's own universal media streaming server technology. It was like skype + Net go to meeting + youtube + hulu + webinar + radio / tv broadcast streaming. It was a great product that we could never monetize nor monitor fully. It drained all of our capital and we never fully recovered from investment costs.

[Jim622]

Soundclick, Reverbnation

[Lisa Gates]

an even more recent article here:

https://edmranks.com/soundcloud-could-be-sued-for-massive-copyright-infringement/

WARNING - THIS HAS A PICTURE WITH FOUL LANGUAGE ON IT - WARNING

sorry it was just part of the article I found in several places...

[Lisa Gates]

Thanks Tom,

Actually I think this isn't the beginning..it is always going on the music industry right? is it liberal legalities or conservative crap who knows? 

What is true is that public sentiment and what the listeners want are rarely considered. So SAD! It's never easy...

Lisa

[TapperMike]

I don't think one can put this on politics (even though I'd love to) Both parties have drank the RIAA Kool aid and no party has addressed the ugly underbelly of the music industry since Payola. Payola is alive and well even though it has switched sides from record labels offering to radio stations demanding.

Speaking of payola

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/04/are-direct-royalty-deals-with-clear-channel-media-the-new-payola-.html

This could be the perfect way to drown out what little new music does come to radio. ASCAP, BMI, SESAC collect royalties where ever, whenever but if it's not on the radio or television none of those royalties are directly returned to the artist. Instead they are just "held for processing" as much of the publishing and copyright generated royalties.

[john]

oh well, there goes my suggestion lol We are planning on launching a site supporter role, ie members who support the site financially (at say $15 per quarter) who would get access to extra features, articles, tools, intel, downloads etc. One thing we could look at is providing those members with extended storage including private albums.

 

I do know that I cannot afford to shoulder the current costs of the site, nevermind additional storage.

[CapM]

I'm about ready to fire Soundcloud.  I've always thought it had serious limitations.  The mobile browser stinks, and tracks that I deleted from my account still show up, songs skip on playback a lot (on mobile).  I changed my subscription to monthly several months ago because i wanted to change.  Now the site is down - since four days ago.  What kind of website stays down for 4 days in this day and age?

 

But the alternatives are mind boggling.  Bandcamp, Bandzoogle, Bandvista, Hearthis.at, Wix, not to mention Soundclick and Reverbnation.  I just want a site that hosts my catalog, not one that "markets" my band.  I do like how Soundcloud can be embedded on this site and others - don't know if many of the others can.

 

Any more input would be helpful.

[john]

Hey

 

It depends how seriously you approach your music, what your goals are. To put all your eggs in any one basket is a pretty large risk which ever goals you have, but the Impact should the worst happen, if for example you planned on having a career in music, or took your music seriously as a planned semi-pro, is pretty catastrophic.

 

I recommend multiple OMDs no matter. After all, why restrict yourself to just one? You are just getting your music out there.

 

That said, if you are remotely serious about your music, I would recommend having one site as your core, central site.... the site that all roads lead to. I.e. Have the other sites too, as promo sites. 

 

Which one to have as your core site? None of them. Build a site. Capm.com. Preferrably, don't host it with any of those sites. If you have never built a site that will sound pretty daunting, but it all comes back to risk.

 

What is this risk? Why go to all that trouble?

 

mp3.com

 

Once upon a time MP3.com was thee site for indie music. If you were involved in indie music you your music pages there. Bands spent hundreds of hours promoting their pages, networking on and around the site, building links on other sites pointing to their MP3.com pages, and then... MP3.com was sold, and the new owner wanted to switch to mainstream music. With almost no warning, they closed the indie artist pages overnight, and that was it. All that effort, wasted. Hundreds of links out there to band pages that no longer existed.

 

You run the same risk when sites close.

 

If you have your own site, you can control everything. Yes, your host can still go bust, but hoisting other sites is core to their business. They also have mechanisms to allow you to transfer your domain, capm.com, away to another host... and in a way that doesn't leave hundreds of broken links out there.

 

So, if you absolutely must, go with an OMD that allows you to host your own domain. Just know that their level of business is much lower than a host that will host any site, and size is definitely a factor in how long sites last. Unless the site owner is bloody minded, like a certain Songstuff.com owner I could mention.

 

i would say more, but I have to go just now.

 

Cheers

 

John

[CapM]

Weird.  I've tried to enter the site via my computer and also the website on my phone browser, and I get a "Sorry!" error message.  I can't even get to the login page.  I'll try again tonight when I get home.  Thanks.

[CapM]

Weird.  Thanks for letting me know the site isn't down.  So I can't load on Safari or Chrome (I get a "Sorry something went wrong" error message) and can't even listen to anyone's embedded songs.  On a whim I downloaded Firefox and lo and behold it works on it.

 

I went to their support forum, but they've disabled the ability to post and it's read-only because they're updating their help site (expected by October 31st).  Who the heck disables their help forum??!  I sent an email at support@soundcloud.com (I don't even know if this is a real email address - I'm guessing).

[CapM]

They must still be working at it.  Finally able to go to login screen after 4-5 days of this.  Now the issue is that I can't click on the login name box to enter a new email address.  

[MonoStone]

On 25 October 2016 at 0:10 PM, CapM said:

I'm about ready to fire Soundcloud.  I've always thought it had serious limitations.  The mobile browser stinks, and tracks that I deleted from my account still show up, songs skip on playback a lot (on mobile).  I changed my subscription to monthly several months ago because i wanted to change.  Now the site is down - since four days ago.  What kind of website stays down for 4 days in this day and age?

 

But the alternatives are mind boggling.  Bandcamp, Bandzoogle, Bandvista, Hearthis.at, Wix, not to mention Soundclick and Reverbnation.  I just want a site that hosts my catalog, not one that "markets" my band.  I do like how Soundcloud can be embedded on this site and others - don't know if many of the others can.

 

Any more input would be helpful.

 

I think Soundcloud mobile is crap too (in terms of it not giving all the functionality of the main site), and Soundcloud's main site isn't great in some ways (although I don't think the site has been down, or not in the UK anyway, I've been using it daily). At the moment, Soundcloud is the best of the bunch for me in terms of 1. Just hosting tracks with no fuss, and 2. Networking with other artists, the community (which includes well known artists who very occasionally take notice of the great unsigned). In terms of community/networking/promotion within that community... you get what you give on Soundcloud, much like you do on Songstuff. Also, I've noticed recently a slight increase in engagement with music 'fans/listeners' as opposed to only other music artists. If Soundcloud play it right then that could increase further, but chances are they won't!

 

Reverbnation is, in my opinion, a rip-off site...it's all about trying to sell you opportunities and blowing smoke up your arse with fake charts.

 

Bandcamp seems to be a reasonably good place to put your music up for sale or download (not that anyone should expect to sell anything or even get any downloads simply by putting tracks there, they do nothing worthwhile to promote artists) and as a simple web presence for any artist (an alternative or addition to making your own website), and that seems to be the focus more than hosting tracks to embed etc, and the community is nowhere near as good as Soundcloud.

 

Wix, as far as I know from using it for non-music sites, is simply a website builder/web host, it has no other benefits specific to music artists (as far as I know)....it's just a place to make your website.

 

I've not used Soundclick, but I've listened there as some people on here use it...and it might be an ok host (I don't know) but there's really nothing appealing about it to me.

 

I've not tried the others you mentioned...but for all its faults, Soundcloud seems pretty good in my experience. Mobile playback stutters occasionally, just as Youtube does, but I'm not sure that's their fault...sometimes it's my device or the wifi. 

 

 

[CapM]

Yet more issues with Soundcloud.  Instead of deleting songs and uploading new ones every time I make a change, I edit and replace tracks.  That way your followers don't have to see the same song pop up time after time as if it's a new song.

 

Anyhow, now updated songs are not played on the app, but play fine on the browser.  I updated a song over 24 hours ago, and the old version is still playing on the app.  I tried clearing the app's cache, closing the app, logging off and back on, and even shutting down my phone altogether.  Still the OLD version plays on the app.  Again, web browsers play the new one fine. 

 

Seems like it should be simple programming for Soundcloud.  Ridiculous.

[starise]

CapM , I feel your pain. I don't think any of them are very good. I had at one time thought that SC was pretty good. Though I have made a few friends on SC I don't necessarily feel as if it really catapults my music out there. 

 

Maybe the stats and plays vary by areas and genre. From where I sit across the pond from the Ewekay, it looks more like a friendly place for fellow musicians to scratch one anothers backs. This might come across as condescending, but I personally feel that over 95% of the talent on SC should have either gone back to the drawing board or thought twice about trying to make music. There seems to be so much crap on SC you can't find the really good music. 

 

A few listeners come around who only want to listen to your music or similar, the rest are out trying to cross promote each other. I got sick of trying to find something good to say about some of it. I know that sounds harsh, but I feel it is the reality. Most of the valuable listeners are more likely to check out Pandora.

 

That said I'm still on SC for the foreseeable future because there isn't much else out there any better. I'm lacking the time to really do a good co-scratch