Crafty claims by Soundcloud?

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Greetings aliens, one and all!

Rather curiously I just received an email from my (apparently) ''friendly Community Team'' Soundcloud ''friends''.

I currently have a free SC account.
The download limit for a song (on a free account) is 100 downloads.

To enable more than 100 downloads on a track, one needs to purchase a ''Pro'' account - which comes at not inconsiderable wealth every month to a hobbyist like me.

Since sticking up the track at the start of this year, I was getting approx 5-10 downloads a month.
It's an okay song (it's a cover of a tune by a very famous boy band), but it's not my best by any means - in fact, I did a much better and more interesting cover of a different song by the same boyband, and that cover has hardly any downloads for now...


Suspiciously, in the last 4 weeks, my download count has gone from below 10 a month (which is how I'd expect it to continue) to 68...
(I realise this is nothing compared to better music producers etc, but for a cover of a song that was released by a boyband 16 months ago, it is rather strange why NOW it's generating 600% of it's previous monthly downloads).

I'm a cynical fellow, and I wonder if it could be because Soundcloud themselves download songs by their free members, so to encourage them to switch from free accounts to pro accounts.

What do you reckon?
Have you experienced this too?

Cheers.

(ps, sorry I won't be able to respond to any replies here in the next 10 days 'cos I'm going to rural Tibet).

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I have not heard of that, but I do not doubt for one second that the idea was at least suggested in a SC boardroom at a monetization brainstorm session...
I am pretty confident that in the last year or so SC has started running their own SC bots...

The bean counters have taken over at SC HQ unfortunately. :(

Have fun in Tibet. :)
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Doug1978 wrote:Greetings aliens, one and all!

Rather curiously I just received an email from my (apparently) ''friendly Community Team'' Soundcloud ''friends''.

I currently have a free SC account.
The download limit for a song (on a free account) is 100 downloads.

To enable more than 100 downloads on a track, one needs to purchase a ''Pro'' account - which comes at not inconsiderable wealth every month to a hobbyist like me.

Since sticking up the track at the start of this year, I was getting approx 5-10 downloads a month.
It's an okay song (it's a cover of a tune by a very famous boy band), but it's not my best by any means - in fact, I did a much better and more interesting cover of a different song by the same boyband, and that cover has hardly any downloads for now...


Suspiciously, in the last 4 weeks, my download count has gone from below 10 a month (which is how I'd expect it to continue) to 68...
(I realise this is nothing compared to better music producers etc, but for a cover of a song that was released by a boyband 16 months ago, it is rather strange why NOW it's generating 600% of it's previous monthly downloads).

I'm a cynical fellow, and I wonder if it could be because Soundcloud themselves download songs by their free members, so to encourage them to switch from free accounts to pro accounts.

What do you reckon?
Have you experienced this too?

Cheers.

(ps, sorry I won't be able to respond to any replies here in the next 10 days 'cos I'm going to rural Tibet).
my soundcloud only gets hits when I post a new song, very, very few downlaods so I would say I doubt it :shrug:
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.

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Perhaps someone linked it somewhere, and it just got more downloads that way. But it wouldn't surprise me if SC did use that method, especially if you immediately got an email with an upgrade offer.

But hey, why not assume your popularity increases? It certainly feels better. :)

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Soundcloud are full of sh1t


Last week I downgraded my account from Pro and all of a sudden my play counts/follows/comments jumped up a bit.

I also carried out an experiment several months ago where I got 10 people I knew to follow my account and it didn't show up on the actual number of followers.

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while what you suggest is possible, i find it highly unlikely, its also possible they are real dls for some reason.

i think the much more likely answer is simply that the number is wrong.

soundcloud is not known for its accurate metrics.
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Soundcloud are full of sh1t
:hihi:
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This is pretty typical of a cover track.
As someone mentioned, you probably had someone share it on a Reddit or Facebook page.

I know a cover song I have gets a much higher percentage of listens/downloads/likes than any of my other songs and I have done very little to promote it, but back when I actually paid the egregious monthly amount, I decided to trace where exactly the listeners were coming from using the stats that pro users get (I tend to miss those from time to time)
I was lead to another Soundcloud user, who, while he didn't post his OWN content, seemed to make playlists of other artist's music and share it with his followers. While he didn't have a HUGE number of followers, he certainly had more than me (which is embaressing that a non-content creator can gain more followers than a content creator) and I am guessing it is through those followers that the listeners came from.

If you're REEEEALLLLY curious, you could just pay for 1 month just so you get the stats tracking and see if you can't track where the song has been posted. Or, you can just trust in my hypothesis above.

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Hink wrote:
Doug1978 wrote:Greetings aliens, one and all!

Rather curiously I just received an email from my (apparently) ''friendly Community Team'' Soundcloud ''friends''.

I currently have a free SC account.
The download limit for a song (on a free account) is 100 downloads.

To enable more than 100 downloads on a track, one needs to purchase a ''Pro'' account - which comes at not inconsiderable wealth every month to a hobbyist like me.

Since sticking up the track at the start of this year, I was getting approx 5-10 downloads a month.
It's an okay song (it's a cover of a tune by a very famous boy band), but it's not my best by any means - in fact, I did a much better and more interesting cover of a different song by the same boyband, and that cover has hardly any downloads for now...


Suspiciously, in the last 4 weeks, my download count has gone from below 10 a month (which is how I'd expect it to continue) to 68...
(I realise this is nothing compared to better music producers etc, but for a cover of a song that was released by a boyband 16 months ago, it is rather strange why NOW it's generating 600% of it's previous monthly downloads).

I'm a cynical fellow, and I wonder if it could be because Soundcloud themselves download songs by their free members, so to encourage them to switch from free accounts to pro accounts.

What do you reckon?
Have you experienced this too?

Cheers.

(ps, sorry I won't be able to respond to any replies here in the next 10 days 'cos I'm going to rural Tibet).
my soundcloud only gets hits when I post a new song, very, very few downlaods so I would say I doubt it :shrug:
as with Hink - I doubt it. Instead you should be thrilled someone likes what you have done (and try and 'monetize' it - you too deserve to get paid)

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valerian_777 wrote:
Soundcloud are full of sh1t
:hihi:
Oh, so you found my SC site then? :hihi:

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as previously mentioned, maybe the metrics are generally off. one song i uploaded, almost instantly had 8 downloads and 2 plays. very odd...

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The bots are super friendly!
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Thanks fellas for the interesting replies (and sorry again for the delay).

As I'm not a prolific producer by any means - it takes me a long time to get a few songs out - I'll probably avoid SC's urgings to upgrade my account for now.
(I'll also keep any eye on my other handful of songs on there in the coming weeks to see if anything else a tad fishy is going on!).

ps, here's a photo of me looking very cold at Everest (on a rare non-cloudy day apparently) last week:

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Cheers :)

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Impressive landscape! Sounds like you an amazing trip. :)

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