SoundCloud for Artists (distributing your music)- any thoughts?

The Lounge General Discussion
#21

They meant the platforms.

But don’t all distributors kind of distribute to the same platforms?
Also, if most of those platforms went out of business i wouldn’t notice cause nobody uses any of them but the big 3 or 4 and every distributor does distribute to those big ones so what’s the argument? They distribute to some platforms that might go under? Like anyone even knows what those are called and as if distributing to them caused any harm. I hope they explain what’s the issue with distributing to those platforms that are at risk of going under otherwise their argument is the silliest I’ve seen today.

#22

not relevant anymore, in my opinion. It’s easy to self-publish on other (more relevant) platforms and unfortunately, Soundcloud’s recommendation engine isn’t very good. Plus, you have to pay and/or login to get full access, even if the content isn’t very good.

I guess, they are Myspacing their way out of this world, sooner than later.

#23

We’re are talking about the distribution (Spotify, YouTube, etc) SoundCloud does offer. Saludos!

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#24

How do you define and measure “relevant”? It’s a genuine question.

Added: and which platforms are you referring to?

It’s just to understand your point.

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#25

I don’t think you can distribute to Spotify, etc yourself - you need a middleman. Unless there’s something I’ve totally missed about the process.

#26

No I wouldn’t say they’re not doing well, but they cut nearly 25% of their WW staff with layoffs in a 10 month period last year in an attempt to reach profitability by the end of 2024, so they’re deffo not in as comfortable of a position as their competition in the distro world. Even if this isn’t a case of them going under if they’re not making any money off distro it’ll be on the chopping board as a service as it’s gonna be taking up a lot of their resources too. If that were to happen I’m sure another company would aim to come in and acquire that arm off them but if you’re then stuck on some second rate service from that it can be a pain to move your catalogue to a new distributor. If you’re ever lucky enough to be in a position where a label would be keen to do a licensing deal on old tracks in that system it can be a dealbreaker (and has been at the label I work at - tip don’t use Ditto) if it’s extremely difficult to transfer to a label’s distributor.

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#27

Why is it difficult to move the catalog from ditto to another distributor? Why ditto in particular?

#28

Not all are hard to move between but most ‘self serve’ distributors have very poor customer service to help on this. They’re also not particularly helpful with moving music across to new distros as they don’t really want music coming off their service. Ditto we’re only cited as an example as they’re the worst self serve I’ve had to deal with, their support was almost non existent and made it even stupidly difficult moving music into FUGA, a leading and extremely proficient distributor.

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#29

Do you have any recommendations for any of the ‘self serve’ distributors?

#30

Aha they all have their caveats really, I mean distrokid is a think the most popular one on account of all the marketing additions they integrate into their platform but I’d say the quality of their distro chain isn’t the strongest. If I had to pick one I’d maybe say Tunecore as they’re owned by Believe.
Believe also have a lot of company acquirements that can feed tech & resources back into TC for the foreseeable future as well.

EDIT:
Would backtrack on this suggestion actually as there’s an interesting update going on with Believe (TC’s parent company) atm, they’ve been trying to take their company back private with the help of consortium backing, but as of today it appears Warner have now jumped in with the intention of buying out their shares to take them off the public market now. Could be very good for them, but could also be problematic, that remains to be seen if&when a deal goes through.
To suggest a different self-serve distro, CD Baby have also progressed further than I’d anticipated in recent years. I currently work with FUGA who’s parent company is Downtown Holdings, and they also own CD Baby looks like a lot of tools and distro pathways available to me at FUGA are available to users of CDB as well which is pretty cool.

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#31

Relevant in a sense of getting tracks heard by an audience (assuming that this is the main objective of using SoundCloud and similar services).
SC was great for that in the beginning but now platforms like YouTube or Spotify have almost completely taken over. I’m not saying that these are necessarily better or that this was a good thing, just that the audience is bigger.

If you just want to upload your tracks to, for example, post them in forums, SoundCloud is fine.

#32

As far as I know, you’re right. But you could use third party services to get that done. Sure, it doesn’t end there as you’d also have to promote your tracks in order to reach a broader audience, but same applies to other platforms (like SoundCloud).

Other platforms could be YouTube, Vimeo or bandcamp with YouTube being the one I’d recommend for reach. Bandcamp would be my choice for fairer payment.

I also miss the good-ol-days when SoundCloud had a great recommendation engine and a pool of mostly enthusiastic musicians sharing their tracks. But in my experience, these days are over.

#33

@colectivo_triangular I follow your reasoning but there are several topics combined that are in fact separate:

About distributing music to Spotify, Apple Music, etc (what this topic is about):

Exactly, and Soundcloud is a third party service like any other. You pay them not much money, you upload your track and all the metadata, and after a couple of weeks your track is on all those platforms, and you can “claim” them if you create your account on each platform and follow their steps. This si the core of “distribution” and most services offer more or less the same, I think? (leaving aside marketing)

About YouTube, Vimeo or Bandcamp (or many other cool self-publishing platforms). No Soundcloud will help you there, but no Distrokid etc either. You need to… self-publish. Here too Soundcloud doesn’t give more or less than other third party distributors.

About getting tracks heard by an audience, this goes off-topic here, but for what is worth, if I have to trust the stats provided by each platform, I get more listeners in small not-really-mainstream Soundcloud than in the big famous pervasive platform. Leave alone more feedback, which for me is way more valuable than a number of silent anonymous plays that anyone (including bots) can fake.

This is because no platform alone will bring you any listeners. For the big ones you still need to do all your social media marketing to make people listen to your track instead of the other gazillion released just today in the same gender and style. And this is where Soundcloud with their original feature of commenting tracks and follow/message users brings something completely different. Soundcloud is a social media platform as well, not just a music distribution/consumption one.

I have no interest in praising or defending Soundcloud. It has many quirks and I just wish the Fediverse/Mastodon/Faircamp/etc indy zone would work better for this task. I’m also considering switching to something less anonymous and also social like DiGiDi for distribution. But in the meantime, the fact (for me) is that Soundcloud is where this hobbyist amateur finds more satisfaction. And this is why I decided to try Soundcloud for Artists when I had to choose a third party distributor.

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