Is Soundcloud still the best option for posting One-Synth-Challenge tracks?

[Medniex]

It is hard to predict the future for any free service, but I tried that audiomack.com recently and it felt really close to soundcloud in terms of features.

Speaking for my personal situation and opinion.

I have already over the 15 track limit, so to me applies that 180 minute rule. I guess that means I can post few more tracks before I have to decide.

I like the spirit of OSC, that VST plugins are free-ones most of the time and there are no any other costs for making your submission. There's still workaround for that SoundCloud issue by making another account (or maybe you are using pro version anyway). I mean everyone can decide how seriously they want to treat this game. This situation just made a little bit of inconvenience it's not like SoundCloud made OSC impossible.

[chk071]

For those who want to read it: https://help.soundcloud.com/hc/en-us/ar ... load-limit

So, yeah, threshold of 15 tracks, although your tracks will remain, when you uploaded them before 9th of december. So, if you have 100 tracks on your Soundcloud, they will remain, but, you can't upload anymore then.

What if my account has more than 3 hours of audio or 15 tracks after December 9th?
Anything you upload before December 9th, 2019 when the new upload limit goes into effect will remain on your account, will not be hidden, and will continue to be available to you and all listeners.

On December 9th, if you have more than 3 hours of audio or 15 tracks on your account, uploading will become temporarily disabled. To continue uploading, you will need to make space for new uploads by either deleting older tracks to get under the free limit or unlocking unlimited uploads by upgrading to a Pro Unlimited plan.

[RichardSemper]

Couple of thoughts -

I personally quite like Soundcloud, (though I have not tried others yet). I have used it now for quite a few years and reached 42 tracks without having to pay anything. This is very generous of them imho.
Almost at my limit, I was considering subscription anyway. For my purposes it seems worthwhile.

My options with the new limit are:

1. to remove about 30 tracks to clear space for new OSC entries, and host them elsewhere e.g. my own website.
2. to pay the subscription.
3. Find another service which provides similar service for free.

With respect to OSC it is still possible for anyone to participate for free using option 1. So it is only a barrier to entry for those who do not wish to remove older tracks, or pay the subscription. The same situation existed already for those who exceeded the previous limit. Just the goalposts have changed.

I am very interested to hear peoples views, and am going to check out your alternative suggestions. Keep em coming...

[ilmai]

I have already over the 15 track limit, so to me applies that 180 minute rule. I guess that means I can post few more tracks before I have to decide.

Actually you are already over the limit, since it’s 15 tracks or 3 hours, whichever comes first.

Personally I don’t think any platform apart from maybe Youtube can be trusted to exist in five years, so any effort moving to another service might be wasted at a moment’s notice. I’m not sure how to best achieve it, but it would probably be best if participants could host their tracks wherever they want, and the OSC site would only take care of voting.

[functionform]

Audiomack is looking like a strong alternative.

[Mushy Mushy]

But you only need to pay if you exceed the track threshold. It’s business as usual otherwise.

The threshold is 15 tracks and a lot of folks over the past year or 2 have probably exceeded it already before this policy change, with or without having participated in OSC.

Precisely. If they’ve exceeded the threshold they’re making good use of SC so pay for it.

[Leonard Bowman]

I would be okay with still using SoundCloud, but I'm definitely not going to pay for their service. As someone who has bought a total of 1 plugin total, I don't have the money to spend on that and I don't particularly like soundcloud anyway.

I can delete my old tracks and move them somewhere else when I want to. It's a little bit of a hassle but if we're still using soundcloud for OSC that seems like my best option.

[exponent1]

But you only need to pay if you exceed the track threshold. It’s business as usual otherwise.

The threshold is 15 tracks and a lot of folks over the past year or 2 have probably exceeded it already before this policy change, with or without having participated in OSC.

Precisely. If they’ve exceeded the threshold they’re making good use of SC so pay for it.

How about users who have exceeded these 15 tracks over many years, people who upload very sparsely? The question is not whether one should pay for SC for using its services, it's whether OSC should continue to use SC for hosting/scoring tracks and these are 2 very different things. The OSC doesn't upload tracks, the participants use their own accounts to upload their tracks so the participants have a say in whether or not they'd want to pay for SC to keep participating in OSC.

[Daru925]

Its very possible to have alternate free accounts and make one per OSCyear.

[Inguz]

I just want to say that Audius has great audio quality on their streams compared to SoundCloud.

[Hanz Meyzer]

Hm, but isn't it lot about commenting, too?

[Vortifex]

..

[RichardSemper]

Here's my entry for April 2019 - link to AudioMack

https://audiomack.com/song/richardsempe ... osc122flac

Site looks good (apart from constant google ads showing up), sounds good too. I notice it is not showing up in a player on the above link like soundcloud does.
Can comment on it too.

Does anyone see a way to download the track?

[vurt]

an outsider so just a query...

why is the comments on sc so important?
can comments not be made within the thread if it's not available on whatever site the audio is posted?

[metaside]

Hearthis.at might be another option. It can be a bit laggy, but in my experience it's reliable and you can even import your soundcloud and mixcloud tracks with a click.
I just tried to get an EP on Audiomack, but something went wrong during the first upload and since then I got multiple very strange and partly incomplete error messages when editing, replacing tracks was not possible and so on. Deleted the whole EP in the end and closed the site. The site looks very nice though, will try again at some point ^^