Soundcloud weirdness

Hello Elektronauts,

I’ve had some rather strange experiences with Soundcloud and I’m wondering if these things have happened to anyone else.

Issue #1:
On three different occasions I received an email from Soundcloud letting me know that someone liked my song, just hours after I had uploaded the song. The things is, according to my Soundcloud page the song hadn’t even been played yet. Kinda strange that someone could like a song that supposedly hadn’t been played.

Issue #2:
Someone, supposedly in the Ukraine, using the name Mister, did something called a “Repost” on a song that I had just uploaded a few hours before. It isn’t clear to me how this “Repost” actually benefits me and it just seemed to me that my song had been hijacked by this person called Mister (if this person actually exists). I checked out Mister’s Soundcloud page and found that there were 7 songs made by other people that had the same title, plus a bunch of other songs with the same word in the title. Remember, this all happened just hours after I had uploaded my song, plus Mister doesn’t even make his own music.
This all seemed a bit weird to me so I started looking for a way to remove my song from Mister’s Soundcloud page. I finally just deleted the song and uploaded it again which successfully eliminated the “Repost”. At that time, my newly uploaded song only had 1 play, which according to the info on the Soundcloud site, you would normally lose the play count unless you have a Pro account. However, the next day the song had 115 plays and I assumed that these plays occurred on Mister’s Soundcloud page since none of my other songs had any new plays. The song eventually got to 126 plays and then just stopped. The song gets 115 plays in one day and then nothing. Hmmm.

Issue #3:
On my latest song there are no plays and yet there is a comment from someone who is obviously not a native English speaker, offering to help me make my song better. You know, it just seems kinda strange that for a song that hasn’t been played by anyone yet and yet someone that hasn’t even heard the song seems to think they can make it better.

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It’s all spambots, completely harmless if you ignore or report them as spam.
SoundCloud is a binfire.

I don’t think I’ve ever posted a track and not had some bot with a nubile 18yo girl as a profile pic like it without listening to it, then follow me, then offer me some sort of bullshit “get your tracks played on…” or whatever before disappearing.

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OK, so it’s not just me.
Can anyone tell me something about the “Repost” thing. They mention it in the info about the Pro accounts and it kind of looked a bit of a scam for people that don’t even make music to get money somehow. Looks rather dodgy.

I think the play count adds/logs the number of plays if you listen through to the end.

You could skip through a track & it won’t register as a play unless you let the track end. Then it will register as a play.

I think.

I’m pretty sure it counts as a play if someone only listens to the beginning of the song.

Yep, from Soundcloud:

We count a play once the play button is clicked. If a listener is logged into their SoundCloud account, their plays will be tracked in real-time. If they are not logged in, their plays will be updated within 24 hours. We don’t count self-plays on your own tracks, since those are your own plays.

I think for Issues 1 and 2 they are related: they are spam accounts that are hoping that you will follow them. Once they have enough follows, they can sell that “audience” (of many spam accounts) to people who are desperate enough to want to buy followers/plays/whatever. Issue no 3 I guess is just someone trying to shill their services.

Always!

Lol

When it first started it was great for getting in touch with artists from all over the world. It quickly descended into fake accounts and soulless marketing pish.

The repost is just a tool to share other peoples music you like to your fan base. Assuming that they would do the same in return I suppose.

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Like anything, SoundCloud is what you make of it. Certain communities are alive and well on SoundCloud.

A strategy that i’ve employed to get listens is to actually listen and comment on other artists tracks that SoundCloud thinks are similar to my own. The braindance/IDM community isn’t that big. All those listens, I know are real because I interact with those artists (and the people who like those artist) and vice versa.

Shameless plug :slight_smile: https://soundcloud.com/cassilda_and_carcosa

I just want to note, music is just as much about community as it’s about the music itself.

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It’s also been of the main ways that artists and labels share promo materials for a good few years now, whether as streams or downloads, so that alone probably keeps it going.

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when you track got reposted by another artist / user / fan … your music get spread out and your track get more listeners and maybe more followers.

Another fun (or not so fun) fact about soundcloud: they charging 19% VAT on pro plans - but the VAT in Germany is only 16% from July to Dec 2020.

its interesting

https://soundcloud.com/imprint

DE258657906 <- thats most certainly a German vat number

Why are they charging so much?

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Personally, I’m not going to be interested in a Pro account unless the weirdness goes away.

Disclaimer: I used to work for SoundCloud

You can like content without listening to it. Most platforms work this way: You can like YouTube videos without watching them, like posts without reading them, etc. Some people does that to save a “bookmark” and come back to the content later.

Reposting is similar to sharing FB posts or retweeting a tweet, a user shares a track with their followers. It’s a good way to grow an audience.

When you find weird likes, reposts or plays it can be spambots, they do that on random tracks to avoid detection. When many spambots act on the same tracks it makes easier to mark them as bot.

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Thanks for the info. I always appreciate a bit of enlightenment.

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