Do you have Soundcloud OCD?

[MatthewH]

Hi all!

I'm (obviously) new around here. [hand-wavey icon]

Recently I started releasing music again, after a period of not giving a shit for a few years. Since I was last doing it I find technology has changed radically.

In the "olden days" (2004-2007) my stuff (the Bodega record label, now defunct) was being sold on Beatport and I'd log into Baseware to check my sales stats constantly, like, 30 times a day around new release days.

Now I find that I'm habitually checking Soundcloud. As if there's really any difference in my life if I get three more plays during supper. They have all those cool stats, though - US vs UK plays is always interesting to check.

Anybody else hooked?

Matthew

ps. Also, it's kinda weird that you can see who, of the people you've sent tracks to, didn't listen to them. Kinda stalkerish.

 

[zhao]

haha sometimes i get that way after uploading something for a few days and then get tired of it... now i look maybe once a week if that.

i think your OCD will diminish over time...

 

[zhao]

somewhere in there is a socio-psych term paper about virtuality, emotional substitutes, love, ego, audience-artist relations, etc., etc.

 

[Alfons]

Think this applies to all sorts of web based phenomena, easy to get caught up in checking twitter replies, facebook notifications etc... Big waste of time in the long run though.



Re. soundcloud I hate all these spammers that are about these days:
"x privately shared a track with you and 39234 other people" not very private is it...

 

[grizzleb]

Think this applies to all sorts of web based phenomena, easy to get caught up in checking twitter replies, facebook notifications etc... Big waste of time in the long run though.



Re. soundcloud I hate all these spammers that are about these days:
"x privately shared a track with you and 39234 other people" not very private is it...

Some people have a serious brass neck when it comes to this shit. All the best stuff I've ever heard off myspace/soundcloud etc has been by accident. The volume of spam is inversely proportional to the quality of the music I find.

 

[Martin Dust]

Re. soundcloud I hate all these spammers that are about these days:
"x privately shared a track with you and 39234 other people" not very private is it...

This ^, delete, delete and delete.

 

[hint]

You can change your notification preferences to either only receive notification about tracks from people you follow, or only receive private tracks "shared to a handful".

There's also a display setting checkbox in the Tracks > From Others tab - "Only show tracks shared to me, to a handful of people and to my Dropbox"

I'm not entirely sure what they class as a handful, because I still get stuff from people like MRACIDJ ("shared to 1601 people") but changing it to "shared to a handful" has cut down on tracks from the people who spam their tech house massively.

 

[MatthewH]

Some people have a serious brass neck when it comes to this shit. All the best stuff I've ever heard off myspace/soundcloud etc has been by accident. The volume of spam is inversely proportional to the quality of the music I find.

There's a fine line, though.

It's true that it's better, as an artist, to put as much time as possible into actually making music, but at some point you've got to take a few minutes to create a Souncloud or whatever and upload your shit, then send it to at least someone.

Anyone on the Cristian Paduraru spam list? That guy - maybe he's come up here before - is some kind of spam extremist. Some people don't seem to see the line between "just want to share with a few friends" and "just writing to tell 2000 of you about my new baby, oh and here's a track".

Actually, while we're on the subject of Soundcloud: when I send out tracks, I usually send a personalized message to the person - within Soundcloud - with a link to the tracks and a bit about who I am - if they don't know me personally - and what the tracks are like.

For you who get a large volume of tracks - am I wasting my time? Is it better to just use the "send track" function?

I'm lucky (in ways) to not receive an unmanageable volume of tracks, so it doesn't so much matter how people send them to me.

Matthew

 

[zhao]

i have never "sent" a track... i just upload them i figure those who are interested in what i do will take notice...

 

[zhao]

what about Fairtilizer? i've been meaning to do that too but have been putting it off... such a fucking hassle to do this shit sometimes.

don't think i will do mixcloud though, 100MB limit on files? what is this 1983?

 

[MatthewH]

I don't mind the 100meg limit, but then I'm a big fan of being concise.

Strange that you can't download, though.

 

[4linehaiku]

Well that's their thing isn't it? Streaming only, they're planning to start putting in ads at some point and be the "future of radio" or something like that. Though I have no idea how they intend to handle the licensing. Trying to make money off user-uploaded DJ mixes strikes me as a pretty dangerous game, one of the reasons I think Soundcloud changed their setup to favour individual track uploaders (ie producers, labels, rights holders of all shapes and sizes) rather than DJ sets I believe.

 

[zhao]

I don't mind the 100meg limit, but then I'm a big fan of being concise.

you make your mixes under 100 just for them?

all mine are 80 minutes 320, so if i want them up there i would have to cut them in half... and i'm not doing that!

 

[wascal]

you make your mixes under 100 just for them?

all mine are 80 minutes 320, so if i want them up there i would have to cut them in half... and i'm not doing that!

You can fit about 72 minutes at 192kbs. Thats not too bad imo, I'd feel dodgy about uploading mixes full of exclusives at 320kbps anyway.

 

[Alfons]

Trying to make money off user-uploaded DJ mixes strikes me as a pretty dangerous game

Why is that? I mean, Im not sure how they are going to make money but like their site and the feel of the player and if they are paying the artists that get featured in the mixes then it's all good right?

 

[4linehaiku]

Yeah that would be totally fine, I'm just a bit confused as to how they will do the "paying the artists" bit. I'm far from an expert on these things, but I've always been under the impression that DJ mixes are a bit of a legal grey area. Technically buying the records doesn't give you the right to play them in clubs, upload mixes with them in, etc etc. This is obviously never enforced if the mixes are freely distributed for promotional purposes and all that, but if you were going to release a Mix CD for money you need to contact all the rights holders and license the tracks. I'm sure someone like Fabric has a bunch of people who do just that. Other streaming-only sites like last.fm and spotify have to get those rights as well. I'm just wondering how mixcloud can feasibly plan to track down and pay for every track on every mix uploaded.

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick though and they can just pay some sort of blanket PRS thing. Like I say, I have no idea really, I was just spouting thoughts off the top of my head.

 

[MatthewH]

Technically buying the records doesn't give you the right to play them in clubs, upload mixes with them in, etc etc.

I'm pretty sure that any legal grey area for live performance is cleared up when you play in venues that pay PRS (or ASCAP/BMI, SOCAN, etc) their yearly fee.

Not sure how many venues comply, but that's why that's there.

As for mixes... that's still pretty grey. If mixcloud doesn't pay royalties to at least one performing rights org (which would then be passed on to the relevant songwriters/publishers in the relevant countries) then they're really a target for litigation if they're generating money.

 

[Martin Dust]

Yeah that would be totally fine, I'm just a bit confused as to how they will do the "paying the artists" bit. I'm far from an expert on these things, but I've always been under the impression that DJ mixes are a bit of a legal grey area. Technically buying the records doesn't give you the right to play them in clubs, upload mixes with them in, etc etc. This is obviously never enforced if the mixes are freely distributed for promotional purposes and all that, but if you were going to release a Mix CD for money you need to contact all the rights holders and license the tracks. I'm sure someone like Fabric has a bunch of people who do just that. Other streaming-only sites like last.fm and spotify have to get those rights as well. I'm just wondering how mixcloud can feasibly plan to track down and pay for every track on every mix uploaded.

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick though and they can just pay some sort of blanket PRS thing. Like I say, I have no idea really, I was just spouting thoughts off the top of my head.

Worry not about it, we had 8000 plays on Youtube - value 0.01p

 

[zhao]

when you see the waveform while listening to a track for the first time, you anticipate the breaks, the drops, the changes, loud/quiet dynamics, because you see them before they happen.

ever thought that this is NOT the way you should experience music???

 

[muser]

well you can do the same thing with vinyl really. altho its definitely easier to get in the habit of automatically skipping to the bit before or after the drops instead of listening to its entirety which can mean missing the greatness of alot of songs,especially when in the midst of one those manic music hunting episodes.