Newcomers releasing music: Bandcamp? YouTube? Soundcloud?

Everything you and others have said about Soundcloud is so on-point - full of bots, ads and the audio quality is bad. It was where I started and it was extremely underwhelming.

Your parents listen to your music? That’s practically a humble brag :joy: I dream of such success.

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Don’t forget that being an artist and being a label manager are two very different activities, it is quite common that a good artist is incompetent in marketing strategies.
There’s no need to get depressed, you are not the only one having this problem

I love Bandcamp for the ability to upload and document a project that exists as a whole and feels finished. Lossless downloads and pretty decent quality streaming as well. Leaving/reading reviews on albums is also an awesome feature

On the other side I have been more active on SoundCloud because of the social component in its sane mechanisms for allowing people to reach out/communicate and follow like minded or genres musicians. Nearly everything else about SoundCloud is steaming refuse. The streaming quality is noticeably worse, the constant marketing for 3+ different premium models seems like bad business and a deterrent for using the service. In closing out what is probably my most negative elektronauts post - I still use it, but fuck SoundCloud.

Also I think someone may have said this but the way Bandcamp handles their platform from a software perspective is admirable

This is depressing. Reminds me of the old Mitch Hedberg bit (“Can you farm?!”).

I don’t want to troll social media hoping to go viral. I don’t want to learn video editing to become a YouTube personality. I don’t want to make tutorials to build a fan base. I just want to make music. When faced with the prospect of doing all that crap hoping for digital engagement, or having statistically no one listen to my music, I think the second option is much better for my mental/spiritual well-being. Much respect to all the people who are able to carve out a career doing this

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Only opt in to what gets you on your path and ignore the rest. If you make music for yourself use your own mechanism (file system?) for saving that history of work, or wait till another platform comes along that makes sense (Bandcamp for me).

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I tell you what, Soundcloud is a slog, but ever since I joined this forum, and have been using it to upload battle playlists and links to my music, it seems like I am getting a few actual followers, and in turn I follow them.

I know its 99% bots (I make a killing with Music Milk Club, how are they all so hot?), But if I keep doing exactly what i am doing, a small group of us should be able to share music and promote each other, kind of how it was 10 years ago.

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I generally pay reddit no mind but any time I’ve posted a song or mix there it gets many more plays than the things I don’t post there. I should probably do that every time I upload.

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r/technoproduction is really nice in general, also r/propertechno

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I have seen neither so thank you! I’ll be looking at them for sure.

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on r/technoproduction they have a weekly feedback thread, really cool, people give genuine constructive feedback on tracks and generally the submissions are pretty good

also the sub wiki has excellent knowledgebase on various topics

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Oh I can certainly use that far more than any extra plays I might get at this stage of my journey. Thanks again :0)

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I miss stickerbombing where youths just ripped off postal mailers and sharpied over, there’s some (local?) trend of two words like CARNE NBD with bland fonts and zero design that would refer to someone’s crypto wallet over an organized crew. Just optimizing for mass sticker slaps, I guess they’re visually effective in that I can see them, but I’m fixating on the lack of design :smiley:

Anyway, if I have a nice domain and am not trying to sell my art necessarily, should I integrate it with a Bandcamp account or just self-host streaming FLAC and video? Is there a good web library I should check out for easy multimedia (graphic design and image layout, lightweight audio player, YouTube or Vimeo embedding)?

I could definitely look into Github hosted reactive web collateral with embedded links to audio and video, so I don’t have to pay for hosting any of it.

Basically looking at setting up a resume of my stuff for collabs and exchanging with other artists of whatever discipline.

I have a track that I really like and I want to put in on my empty bandcamp account, I’ve always looked at bandcamp as a more serious place then soundcloud and I never had any tracks that I’ve felt they are ready for releasing and are not total embarrassment.

I don’t really know if I’m going to finish another track from the same vibe / style soon, and as I’m not a full time producer I don’t really want to commit to this idea that “I have to make several tracks”.

so I was wondering, is it ok to upload only one track? is it a common thing on bandcamp?
and maybe if I make another from the same style somewhere in the future, could I group them into an album or EP or something? or should I just create an album with one track and add later on?

Just noticed some curious thing on Bandcamp. If a release has “Free Download” pricing, the email notifications are not sent. Only if the type is changed at least to “Pay as you wish”.
Saving some CPU on free releases? :smiley: But makes some sense

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Soundcloud was nice about 12 years ago. No, it’s full of short demo tracks, bot users and spam

Bandcamp is the only option that feels good. I put it on spotify etc just in case

Certainly not unheard of. MonoNeon, for example, does this frequently. Tons of singles might clog your artist page though, so if you care about that, maybe do this sparingly or have some title indicator of single vs EP/Album

Totally a taste thing. At least one Elektronaut here makes a yearly album in which they start with a single track and just keep adding until the year is over. I don’t remember the username, but here is their album from last year: 2022 | Theo Stomp

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great, thanks!

Yo, this channel is fantastic.

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Perhaps because you don’t need to be logged in and thus trigger account notifications?

No no, I am subscribed to my own accounts and in the recent months I was publishing a lot of archives and was curious, why there is no a single email. Yesterday I published “pay as you want” and the email appeared instantly.

(Downloads from other users are not triggering any events in any case, only visible in the stats, if that what you meant)

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