KVR Audio

rachmiel · Post by **rachmiel** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 5:18 pm

Greetings KVR!

After a good long break from making music, I'm wading back in. Back when I was last active, SoundCloud was the place to be, especially because of their groups thingie that I used a bunch to submit pieces to groups of like-eared human(oid)s and from which I got a decent number of followers. I don't know why SC discontinued the group feature, but from what I've read the death of groups was kind of the kiss of death for the site.

My question for those of you in the know:

Where's the best place to go these days to get one's music heard? I do out-there glitchy IDM-ish experimental, so a hip-hop or rock site wouldn't be very useful for me. I especially would like the site to have something similar to SC's groups so that I can subject innocent ears to my sonic beasties.

Whatcha think?

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:33 pm

For me, Orfium is the only true Soundcloud alternative, although they are others:

https://www.orfium.com/

Alternatives:

Not free, but good: https://octave.is/
Super easy to use: https://clyp.it/
A serious contender: https://hearthis.at/
Fun: https://logamp.com/
Instant: https://instaud.io/

rachmiel · Post by **rachmiel** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 6:38 pm

Thanks SS! Very helpful, going to do some research based on your suggestions ...

chaosWyrM · Post by **chaosWyrM** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:30 pm

SampleScience wrote:For me, Orfium is the only true Soundcloud alternative, although they are others:

https://www.orfium.com/

Alternatives:

Not free, but good: https://octave.is/
Super easy to use: https://clyp.it/
A serious contender: https://hearthis.at/
Fun: https://logamp.com/
Instant: https://instaud.io/

unfortunately, none of hose are a good "place to go these days to get one's music heard"...theres is no good place to go. those are probably all just fine to host your music and link it and whatnot....not a single one will provide you with any foot traffic, so to speak.

hearthis.at is probably the best hosting...and closest to soundcloud, with all the features and stuff you want or need...but it has almost no user base....AND its probably the biggest one, sooooo..........

i stopped using soundcloud over a year ago....completely abandoned it. i even told people i was leaving it and going to hearthis.at in my soundcloud "about" section. AND i also actively worked on my hearthis.at page (for a while). in the past year my 100% abandoned soundcloud has got over 1k plays....hearthis.at...108.

the best place to get heard is youtube, but thats gonna take a bit of work. as crap as soundcloud is...and however much its circling the drain...its still better than its alternatives.

fluffy_little_something · Tue Oct 10, 2017 9:38 pm

I agree, Youtube is the best site for that. Almost everybody uses it, videos play embedded in every message board...

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Tue Oct 10, 2017 10:05 pm

chaosWyrM wrote:the best place to get heard is youtube, but thats gonna take a bit of work. as crap as soundcloud is...and however much its circling the drain...its still better than its alternatives.

Yes, I agree that YouTube is the best place to at least get a *chance* to be heard. But truth is, to be heard it's not a music hub you need, it's marketing. Unfortunately, proper and cheap marketing is something I haven't found yet in any form. I'm sure it exist though, depending on your genre there may be a marketing agency for the type of music you produce.

rachmiel · Post by **rachmiel** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 12:25 pm

Thanks all 'round.

Yeah self-marketing is not my strong suit. I just wanna make music that people with like-minded sonic taste will listen to and enjoy. I know they're out there (at least I hope!) ... but my music doesn't really fit into a genre, so it's hard to know where these like-minded souls might be found. I have a few hundred SoundCloud followers, but I don't know how to tell them when I upload new tracks. I don't want to do individual pms.

martinjuenke · Post by **martinjuenke** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:28 pm

How about Bandcamp?
It has become my host after disappointing Soundcloud.

rachmiel · Post by **rachmiel** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:58 pm

Bandcamp is high in my list.

Is there something like the erstwhile SoundCloud *groups* feature in Bandcamp? I'd like to be able to post tracks to a site area where people who like certain types of music would listen. That was the great thing about SoundCloud's groups, it exposed my tracks to a large audience of SoundCloud users.

martinjuenke · Post by **martinjuenke** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 3:27 pm

rachmiel wrote:Bandcamp is high in my list.

Is there something like the erstwhile SoundCloud *groups* feature in Bandcamp? I'd like to be able to post tracks to a site area where people who like certain types of music would listen. That was the great thing about SoundCloud's groups, it exposed my tracks to a large audience of SoundCloud users.

AFAIK not...
But maybe I was too blind to see

chaosWyrM · Post by **chaosWyrM** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 4:15 pm

rachmiel wrote:Bandcamp is high in my list.

Is there something like the erstwhile SoundCloud *groups* feature in Bandcamp? I'd like to be able to post tracks to a site area where people who like certain types of music would listen. That was the great thing about SoundCloud's groups, it exposed my tracks to a large audience of SoundCloud users.

bandcamp is really just a storefront. it has virtually zero social networking capabilities of its own.

there really is no replacement for the (good) old iteration of soundloud.

id say your best bet for trying to replace soundclouds groups would be facebook.

i just did a search for "experimental electronic music" and the first 3 hits were groups with over 10k members (total).

so, host your music anywhere you like...and then link it in one or more fb groups.

also...if i were you...id try to exploit your reaktor community standing...not sure how...but id try. maybe do like cal scott does and make some videos of your ensembles for youtube.....link them in the reaktor user library, let them gather a bunch of plays so the algorithms start suggesting you to people and then start sneaking your music onto your channel.

like i said before...a bit of work....but still.

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 5:05 pm

My experience with FB hasn't been good. The people there are mostly nice but even though the groups are big I didn't get much feedback and my tracks took really long to get approved (between a couple of weeks to a year). And people will just like and keep scrolling down as there so much distraction on FB.

Maybe Reddit might be a better place?

martinjuenke · Post by **martinjuenke** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 5:13 pm

The music groups at FB are overcrowded. Nobody can be able to hear the masses of posts. You will be like a cup of water in the ocean...

chaosWyrM · Post by **chaosWyrM** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 5:50 pm

martinjuenke wrote:The music groups at FB are overcrowded. Nobody can be able to hear the masses of posts. You will be like a cup of water in the ocean...

sooooo.....exactly like the old soundcloud groups then?

SampleScience · Post by **SampleScience** » Wed Oct 11, 2017 9:13 pm

chaosWyrM wrote:
martinjuenke wrote:The music groups at FB are overcrowded. Nobody can be able to hear the masses of posts. You will be like a cup of water in the ocean...
sooooo.....exactly like the old soundcloud groups then?

Yeah, but the soundcloud groups were better imo. You could go to a group and just press play to listen to a batch of tunes in the same genre. On FB you have to click for each tune you want to listen to. Not as convenient.

SoundCloud replacements