Soundcloud for dummies?

[hibidy]

Wake the dead!

I completely blew off getting into this because it just seems so complicated. With the lossy clips and confusing pricing it's just cheaper and easier to use box (which I can just do a wav to)

One thing I didn't understand is that when you upload, it takes whatever you have and then coverts it, right? That is why with live you can use this and you don't need mp3, is that right?

Anyways, since so many people are using it I listen all the time. I REALLY REALLY REALLY hate the "follow" part though that always shows people I'd NEVER follow and would rather forget existed

[seismic1]

Yep. When you upload it will accept most formats and re-encode to 128Kbps mp3.

You can upload AIFF, WAV, FLAC, ALAC, OGG, MP2, MP3, AAC, AMR, WMA.

Your upload allowance is calculated on total track length and not filesize.

[hibidy]

Cool

@length matters : That's a bit odd me thinks. Well, maybe not because that is prolly where money matters most. Can't imagine that being a good thing for these guys that have all these really long songs though!

[seismic1]

I guess they are not so worried about the filesize because storage is relatively cheap these days, and a typical track will be played much more often than it is up/downloaded. Network bandwidth is certainly an issue for many people, especially on mobile devices, and streaming mp3 has less impact on SoundCloud's own network connections. Uploads and downloads are probably not handled by the servers used for streaming anyway.

[cron]

I guess they are not so worried about the filesize because storage is relatively cheap these days, and a typical track will be played much more often than it is up/downloaded. Network bandwidth is certainly an issue for many people, especially on mobile devices, and streaming mp3 has less impact on SoundCloud's own network connections. Uploads and downloads are probably not handled by the servers used for streaming anyway.

The thing that confuses me about the streaming is the use of MP3. MP3's successors were developed specifically to offer higher quality using less bandwidth. Why are they using an 18-year-old codec which is known to perform poorly at 128kbps? It's a mystery.

As such, we're left with a service dedicated to streaming audio that has significantly (really significantly) poorer audio quality than Youtube. Madness.

[hibidy]

OMG, I'm scared to death of youtube lol. I'll watch, but I don't every think I'd subscribe to them!

[jancivil]

what are the reasons you do/don't pay for the "extra" options.

for instance, if you want to update a file, I mean replace it, you have to have a paid version.

afaict the widget from it is still going to be a 128mbps job. the encoding isn't the worst but I can't justify paying for that.

one way is official fm, which you upload an mp3 to. I am not hearing a lot of loss from what I upload but some. they don't seem to document what they're doing, so I don't know. I don't care for the orange/blue complement scheme of SC and the waveform display is not as cute to me as it must be to somebody. I don't love having people to follow suggested to me either, I'm not such a consumer or trying to follow people out of popularity.

[cron]

I agree on the waveform display. I've seen a few people even talk about using it as a learning aid. The thing is all but purely aesthetic. Over half of the display's 'dynamic range' is devoted to whisper quiet nothingness. Everything louder than that gets compressed into the tiny bit of room left at the top.

It's useful if you don't like listening to music and prefer just flicking around the bits that look like drops/choruses/whatever, but that's about it.

[hibidy]

But I see you use it. So let me see if I've got this straight. Length is an issue (sorry, I have to giggle) and you can't REPLACE old stuff unless you have the paid version? Is that correct.

lolz, the more I know, the more confused I get. Yet, it's quite popular.

[cron]

Yeah, I do use it

For all I'm slating it, there's nothing that can replace those networking features, although I tend to link to Youtube outside KVR as embedded videos just seem more familiar to non-musicians, and let's face it, who worse to promote your music to than other musicians? Pretty much everybody I know uses Youtube as their main music listening platform these days.

You get 2 hours with the paid account, you have to delete tracks to put new ones on if you go over. You can't 'replace' tracks unless you pay.

Youtube's free account is unbelievable. The level of stats etc is just mindboggling. It's like the highest SC account in terms of detail.

[seismic1]

I agree on the waveform display. I've seen a few people even talk about using it as a learning aid. The thing is all but purely aesthetic. Over half of the display's 'dynamic range' is devoted to whisper quiet nothingness. Everything louder than that gets compressed into the tiny bit of room left at the top.

It's useful if you don't like listening to music and prefer just flicking around the bits that look like drops/choruses/whatever, but that's about it.

It's like those topological maps of the London transport system where unrelated places become close neighbours.

[hibidy]

btw, I appreciate all the responses!

[fedexnman]

Streaming mp3 audio at 128 is just plain sorry .

[Axis1~SL61]

what about trying bandcamp.com? -- It's not much different from SC (without the comments and the wave display, which I don't like) and has the advantage of allowing unrestricted file replacement, which turned out to be very useful when I found out that after uploading 3 full albums a few of my wav files had rendering mistakes (yes, I was in a hurry and didn't have time to listen to them all before uploading).
Another thing I liked it's that their player is visually nice and simple and works very well when posting to facebook. That's important to me because I'd rather post my music at non-musician sites -- like cron said above, musicians trying to make other musicians their main audience doesn't seem very healthy to me either, it rather makes the whole thing look like some sort of a pyramid scheme... (unless you aspire to be a musician's musicician like R.Fripp, but for that you'll have to go the hard way up first)...

P.S.: I'm glad hibidy ressurrected this thread -- discussing streaming sites is always useful and interesting, especially as new ones are always coming up from time to time.

Wake the dead!

I completely blew off getting into this because it just seems so complicated. With the lossy clips and confusing pricing it's just cheaper and easier to use box (which I can just do a wav to)

One thing I didn't understand is that when you upload, it takes whatever you have and then coverts it, right? That is why with live you can use this and you don't need mp3, is that right?

Anyways, since so many people are using it I listen all the time. I REALLY REALLY REALLY hate the "follow" part though that always shows people I'd NEVER follow and would rather forget existed

[highkoo]

SoundCloud is great!
I use it a lot.
I also hear a lot of good music on there.
From people with twenty followers and fifteen plays.

Its possible to just get the cheapest account once you run out of time on the free one. It just 'upgrades' as is with the time and stuff.
I dont recall how much it is exactly, but its cheap.
And I think they came up with a way to just pay for extra time too, for people who arent interested in the 'mega media blitz' packages, but run out of time on the cheap ones.

Are they still in "new design" mode at SC?

If you use an old version of a browser, you see the old version of the layout on the site. Which would not be that odd, except that it actually works a little differently too. (Last I saw of the new version anyway.)
Its weird to me that they coexist.

Youtube is probably a necessary part of a real media campaign to get salable music out there, along with SoundCloud. SoundCloud is great at connecting with other musicians though. Especially for someone who is not on facebook!