To Soundcloud or not to Soundcloud?

The Lounge General Discussion
#17

Naw.

I’ve been digging Soundcloud a lot lately. I’m actually paying the $6 a month or whatever it is to get rid of the ads. It’s the cheapest ad kill out there to keep enjoying mixes and new tunes.

I saw Mixcloud have had a real refresh lately and the site looks nice. But a lot of people abandoned it and it doesn’t seem to have the relevance it once did.

It’s funny tho, having to pay to get rid of ads everywhere u go in your life now. That fucking bites. Like even if I pay on one platform, I’m still getting ad slammed on another.

There needs to be some kind of ad kill aggregate service, I just pay one and they kill the ads everywhere on the platforms I use ( like tiers of 1 service, 3 services, 5 services) - but give me a better deal for doing so.

Still, it’s sickening to be paying for ad kill rather than genuinely feeing compelled to pay for the service I desire.

With Soundcloud, I still get that. Weekly mixes and streams coming through that keep things fresh.

Bandcamp is still ok to me, but the interface is so ubiquitous, and clunky - they haven’t updated it in years.

All this money we pay, for what? Can’t they at least work out how to keep the offer more compelling? At least Bandcamp doesn’t have ads, it just has the too many listens broken heart thing.

I’d love to see them do something wild like open a bonafide physical release store. Like the first one in LA. Then Tokyo. Whatever. All the bandcamp stuff is in there. Vinyl. Live shows. Really try and support and give back. Does bandcamp even do anything like that? Why isn’t there the Soundcloud festival?

I dunno I’m just thinking out aloud.

3 Likes
#18

Been paying for it and now using it as my distributor (repost by SC) and I can’t complain, it works great, covers a pretty much all the stores and services, has great customer support… :man_shrugging:

And I haven’t been bothered by the bots as of late at all actually :thinking:

#19

That s probably when they were considered a start up floating on venture capital money and not having to worry about breaking even, let alone profit. But at some point investors want ROI. And then the ads and paid subscriptions pop up. We all understand an operation like SC is going to have expenses, even if it were not a commercial company, right?

Some of the latest comments here sound like both ads and paid services are not acceptable. How should it pay for the programmers, servers etc then?

The comparison to radio stations and how these pay for playing music also doesn’t float. A radio station is either funded by advertising or public money. But it was declared ads or not permissible. So what s it gonna be?

If we manage to crack this nut here a TON of publishers will be very happy to hear about it!

Disclaimer: i m not defending SC etc, just wanna have a realistic conversation about it

5 Likes
#20

The ROI is exactly why they started asking for subscription payments. If you take out investments and loans, you already made a mistake. Starting your business by gambling your future away with other people’s money (people who care about nothing but money) is an enormous problem with our culture.

I never said ads are not permissible. You’re combining my view with someone else’s. Ads and public funding/philanthropy are good places to start. They could also divide musician profiles (which would be free) from listener profiles. Listeners can pay to have ads removed or to be able to download music or some other incentives, and that money can go to artists and cover the costs of running the service. But I’m not sure how many listeners exist on soundcloud. Probably not many.

Besides, this problem is far deeper than just “who pays for what?” This issue has to do with how our civilization is governed by economic principles instead of spiritual, honor-based or cultural principles. We take capitalism/socialism/communism for granted as though modern liberal economics are good, natural and necessary. This assumption must be challenged. Our culture needs to reevaluate its priorities. Do we really want to be governed by economists and materialists? Are we going to continue gauging success and freedom by the size of our wallets? Is political access still going to be determined by how much wealth one possesses? Will artists ever be supported and granted access to food and shelter and other necessities even though their product is not directly utilitarian or industrial and therefore not inherently worth bank notes? Liberalism is the death knell of Western Civilization and has caused nearly all the problems that artists and craftsmen deal with today.

Perhaps I’m getting off topic. But these problems will not be solved until there is an inherent and fundamental change to our consciousness and we begin to see the world in a different way and value things for their beauty and honorable characteristics instead of for their utility. This change in perspective will alter our economic and political systems in drastic ways that are difficult to imagine, and until this change takes place, we’ll be serving the people who print money and our art and culture will suffer.

7 Likes
#21

Indeed and i think i explicitly stated that i was replying to several of the recent posts.

I do agree for the most part with your macro socio-economic perspective. Don t think all of liberalism is at fault though. But certainly the economic liberalism championed by the ‘west’. Not that china has a better model.

There was an alternative music hosting project built on much of the principles you state mentioned in another thread. But people said it didn t take off. Will try to find it.

#22

Here it is

#23

Inspired by Detroit techno’s backstory, I’m currently reading this:

Juan Atkins took on the character of the book’s “techno rebels”: those who understand the details of technology’s interaction with society and ecology and argue for the benefits to both, over the exploitation and destructive nature of its side-effects. The book came out in 1980, so seems dated and naively optimistic given what the ‘00s and 2010s brought us, but as a manifesto for a more positive blend of societal change and more harmonious use of technology, it’s a real treat.

1 Like
#24

Right, so you mean neo liberalism, Which is basically a branch of conservativism. Please amend.

#25

No, I am well aware of the meanings and implications of these words and ideologies. I mean liberalism, i.e: the ideals of scientific materialism brought on by the philosophy of liberalism and the so-called “Enlightenment” which had its beginnings in the 17th century. This is the belief that the five senses of an individual offer an accurate depiction of reality and anything that the senses do not detect does not exist, thereby undermining the spiritual traditions of the world, atomizing people into individuals in a meaningless mass of other individuals, and encouraging people to put great stock in earthly things. This led to economic power overthrowing the divine right of monarchy. During the age of revolution, the merchant class overthrew the aristocracy and became the defacto rulers of the world and placed economic principles upon the highest pedestal. Now modern people believe the economy is the highest good. Justice is seen in terms of economic distribution, freedom and happiness are measured in wealth, and political access is purchased with coin. Meritocratic principles and honor were essentially eliminated from society. Capitalism came from liberalism, therefore capitalism is a leftist system. Anyone calling themselves a conservative while believing in capitalism is a liar or a fool; one cannot be a conservative and believe in capitalism simultaneously. The ideals are mutually exclusive.

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#26

Unfortunately the word “liberal” has contradictory meanings world-wide.

#27

That s an interesting view. Not very productive i m afraid though. But shall we get back on topic?

#28

Western conservatism , especially American conservatism, is not similar to the non-western conservative societies which is based on less on economic and political ideologies ( of the west)…however, that is also losing it’s grip to the appeal of “sexy” materialism.

#29

Well, you just called all conservatives either liars or fools, and I couldn’t agree more with that sentiment. :clap::clap::clap:

#30

I’m putting this here as to not start a new dedicated rant thread…

Overall I like Soundcloud and pay for the Pro Unlimited subscription.

But, that fkn auto-play station thing drives me mad and makes me want to cancel it!!!??

Firstly, if I switch it off once, stay the FCK TURNED OFF…???

Secondly, when it switches itself back on uninvited, the tracks are SOOOO FCKN BAD!?? It’s always some shite hyped/over-compressed/auto-tuned absolute drivel I would never listen to… it might not be as bad if it was something akin to what I choose to listen to on SC. It annoys the hell out of me.
I’ve just left a playlist playing and went to the WC… playlist ends and this FCKR comes on full blast, talk about a turd ruining a turd… rant over


SiMON at 1:36:

THIS IS FIRE

:face_with_monocle::face_with_monocle: Simon, this is not FKN fire mate.

4 Likes
#31

I have no idea what you’re talking about I’ve never had anything auto-play on SoundCloud? Not in the app and not in the website. What did you do? :joy:

#32

I’m pretty sure it must default new accounts to have it on, like an ‘extra’???
I didn’t do anything, it just plays annoying music at me from time to time. :roll_eyes:

1 Like
#33

I’ve been encountering this on the (Android) mobile app:

Listen to song. Ad starts playing. Close and kill the app. Ad keeps playing.

There’s no way to stop it, all I can do it mute my phone. Frustrating, although I guess the solution is to pay for their service.

#34

very interesting… what Ive been encountering (having a Pro account, and also having the soundcloud app installed on my phone) is that sometimes I will pick up my phone and discover it is playing back music from my soundcloud page - with ZERO apps being actually open on the phone - and therefore no way to stop the playback or change it without actually opening some app that does have audio playback and starting that up, like youtube or something else…

its happened a few times but not everyday - so it seems to be a strange bug or poorly implemented feature

#35

I have just had an ad on MY OWN TRACK while I have a so-called “pro” payed account.
Plus it was for a local store, so they are using my personal data.

How f** is this?

#36

Honeymoon phase is long gone for these older web companies. Gotta make that revenue now. Vimeo has also been subjected to sharp turns in the subscription model too. There used to be one or two tiers. Now there are 5 or so and the lowest (paid) ones become deprived of basic features like adjustable playback rate on your video’s players (which was reverted after public outcry).

1 Like