Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with soundcloud

How does Soundcloud work?

CollectiveMind — Sun, 19 May 2013 08:33:54 -0800

I stumbled across a producer who has had 720,659 listeners to one of her tracks. It has also been favorited 12740 times. Yet she has 12 tracks, is following 404 people and is followed by 114 people. Why doesn't she have a lot of followers? I thought I understood it and the thinking of how and why people use it, but I must not.

Which Social Media is "Best"?

CollectiveMind — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 16:07:01 -0800

II am trying to get a handle on web content and which content has, overall, the best stickiness. Sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr are, as near as I can tell, mostly visual. Blog and microblogging sites like Wordpress and Twitter are word based. Quora, Reddit and Metafilter are information sharing communities. Podcasts and music sites like MySpace or Soundcloud are, for the most part, sound focused. And then you have sites like Facebook and Google+ that are trying to combine the best of all of them. I'm not asking about raw numbers or surveys that show which sites are used by the most people, though I admit that may be the closest I can get to my question. It seems to me that those sites that give people the most freedom to do more than one thing, i.e., not restrict them to a keyboard or a screen, would be the most popular since time is limited. But is it simply that some people who prefer video or are OK typing into a keyboard don't care about how much time they spend focusing in one direction? And are they markedly different from people who only want to listen to podcasts?
Or am I just going to have to be satisfied with leaders in each genre rather than discovering which social media is the "best."

Linking Social Networks

CollectiveMind — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 00:45:27 -0800

I have been combing the social networks I use trying to find a way to link two of them. It's not a big list; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Soundcloud, and Wordpress. I know about IFTTT and Hootsuite, but I'd prefer to not use third party apps if possible. Facebook and Twitter of course, connect to almost everything. But I'm also trying to figure out how stuff I upload to Soundcloud can be posted on LinkedIn. And likewise, I can't get LinkedIn posts to show up my Facebook business page. Is it just not possible w/o 3rd party apps that will make posts I don't need? If there is a way, can somebody tell me?

Help ID song...

likeapen — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:59:50 -0800

What's the song 21 minutes into this podcast?

Is SoundCloud a good gift for a new electronic musician?

Shepherd — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 09:27:06 -0800

Is there a better gift in the $40 range for a budding dubstep/electro musician (in his 60s) seeking to get the word out than SoundCloud Premium? This may or may not be relevant: it's a gift for my uncle, who has been working in music for literally 40+ years and has recently developed a passion for dubstep. He's done a bit of dance music in the past, but has never really worked to make a name for himself online.

He's not Internet-ignorant -- he knows YouTube and YouTube channels, and can upload things there, for instance -- but I don't think has a lot of savvy about music self-promotion online beyond that.

I was thinking about SoundCloud Premium Lite as a gift for Christmas, so he can start uploading tracks, tagging them, and see how that goes. But I'm not much hipper than he is in terms of how musicians self-promote online these days, and was wondering if there was something that would deliver even more bang for that buck.

Canadian, so no access to a lot of services like Spotify and Last.fm, if that makes a difference.

I need a reliable download host that I can 'hotlink' for my band's website to download a zip folder of mp3's

rinsemedown — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 09:13:51 -0800

I need a reliable download host that I can 'hotlink' for my band's website to download a zip folder of mp3's As part of a promo campaign for my band's new songs we are building a one page website that will feature:

Artwork as the background
Two new songs streaming on Soundcloud embedded in the page
Download link for the two songs

I'd like it so when people click "Download" it downloads both songs straight away without taking the user elsewhere (such as Mediafire) to download the songs. Initially I was going to upgrade our Soundcloud account to premium and right click the 'download' buttons on the tracks and copy and paste the link location so the song starts downloading straight away, however it looks like you are unable to download more than one track at a time on soundcloud (I looked if you could download 'sets' and couldn't see anything either), so we would need to have two links for the two songs which wouldn't be the best.

So i'm looking for a website similar to Mediafire where I can right click, copy link location and have that as the download link on my website so when people click the link the tracks (I guess in a .zip or .rar) folder will just start downloading without taking the user elsewhere. I presume this is something that Rapidshare/Mediafire etc like people doing, so if that is the case what other inexpensive options do I have?
I have thought about using Bandcamp or LimitedRun or a similar website however I would like to have the simple, basic and clean website for the two songs.

Sorry for the essay!

This American Life Song ID Request

mnemonic — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:24:29 -0800

Song ID request: This American Life episode "Special Ed," roughly at the 51:00 mark. Instrumental, post-rock maybe? Link inside. Excerpt on SoundCloud. It sounds like El Ten Eleven to me but I cannot find the song on any of their albums I have (debut, North, Secret, Videotaped). Midomi came up with nothing close. Can anyone identify it?

Why should a band be on SoundCloud?

smartypanties — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:12:01 -0800

For a band, what are the benefits of using SoundCloud? Note that I know nothing about any of this stuff, but my band wants to know. Thanks!

Audio Blogs; do they exist?

lipsum — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 04:28:43 -0800

Hello Mefi, I've recently discovered SoundCloud (!!!1) and its mobile application. Since, I'm trying to figure out a way to make use of it for a blogging platform. Say, random street-reports, or such. Do you know any Audio Blogs that don't deal with music, but with verbal audio bits? Reporting of some sort? Thanks!

Sharing music with bandmates, but not paying for another service.

tmcw — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:57:44 -0800

I'd like to share recordings with bandmates. So, an HTML5 or Flash player, and comments. Optionally private. And not SoundCloud - but I have 50 gigs of Dropbox space and also an S3 account. Is there anything like this? Basically, I can bring the storage (work bought me a Dropbox account! Hooray! I underuse it, though - 3%.), something else provides the interface - flash player, comments.

Note that, if there isn't something like this already, then I will write it. I estimate that it's a two day task, with pretty much any framework/language.