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Soundcloud.com

Soundcloud.com is a new social network for music creators that is conceptually very interesting and worth checking out.

What Soundcloud is and isn’t:

Soundcloud isn’t a site to build a new audience. yeah there might be some bleeding edge enthusiasts who come looking for great undiscovered tracks, but in essence its a place to build a communities around shared musical tastes and micro-genres

Soundcloud is a place for people to share music and network with each other. for me i think it could become a social network based create/post/listen to music based on aesthetics/micro-genre as well as place to post works in progress and side projects.

with Sequenza 21, NetNewMusic, and even NewMusicBox there are now a wide variety of places on the interwebs for the new music community to gather and share ideas, but Soundcloud is the first step (although problematic) where we can share our music by by genre, aesthetic and performance practice.  it allows you full control of how your music is streamed and downloaded and there are also moderated groups where you can upload your music and hopefully find others that have similar aesthetic sensibilities.

conceptually there are a lot of possibilities in this service. you can join or organzine groups by genre (art music, pop, rock,dance…) or micro-genre (alt-classical, electronic, drone, field recording, microtonal…), and even performance practice (improv, Csound, max/msp, ableton), the possibilities are endless.

overall i think its a big step in the right direction for composers to find and share music with each other to most importantly it needs wider influx of people to fully realize its potential. and after using it for three weeks here are my observations:

1. strengths
   1. the ability to create groups based on micro-genres are its strength
   2. more international
   3. ability to follow artists you like is easy way to passively keep track of their music
   4. comment on specific sections of tracks
   5. easily share and post music across the interwebs
   6. statistics of listens and downloads
2. weaknesses
   1. it feels like a beta
   2. right now its mostly dance music
   3. free version you can upload only 5 tracks a month, pay version is expensive
   4. limited tagging/genre search functions
   5. lot of spam, need to have private groups and block spammers

in essence, if i want to discuss new music i go to NetNewMusic and if i want to listen to it (in theory) i go to Soundcloud.

In Soundcloud the social networking features do most of the work for me. first i can search for tracks by group, then by popularity and favorites (although i wish their search and tagging features were better). once i find a few composers i like i can also search and see what tracks they like and are commenting on and most importantly i easily download those tracks into ITunes to listen whenever i wish. it’s far from perfect, but right now makes the process of finding composers who are making interesting music much easier.

right now the biggest problem is there a lot of crap. if more people (especially NNM) started using the site… it might get a lot better. by using the site for a few weeks it’s easy to see what the future of music social networking holds. whether its Soundcloud or somebody who does it better i can see the benefits.

even though there is a lot of dance music, here are a few diamonds in the rough:

heinali – To Live (with Maria Navrotskaya)
[soundcloud url="http://soundcloud.com/heinali/to-live-1"]

ALONE TOGETHER – MUSIC DADA (bara no kodoku)
[soundcloud url="http://soundcloud.com/alone-together/alone-together-bara-no-kodoku-long"]

iamanasterix – Chopin played on a Broken Piano
[soundcloud url="http://soundcloud.com/iamanasterix/chopin-played-on-a-broken-piano"]

Mark harris – I am a long way from home
[soundcloud url="http://soundcloud.com/mark-harris/i-am-a-long-way-from-home"]

randygibson – Mujeres de Juárez
[soundcloud url="http://soundcloud.com/randygibson/06-mujeres-de-juarez"]

so here is my official invitation to come aboard and try out Soundcloud. at first i suggest to only upload a 2-3 tracks (you only get 5 free tracks a month), join a few groups and maybe start your own (you could even create a group for those Spoken Word/Glitch/Noise projects you have been working on!)

my moderated groups
http://soundcloud.com/groups/alt-classical
http://soundcloud.com/groups/post-whatever

other groups that are worth checking out
http://soundcloud.com/groups/art-music
http://soundcloud.com/groups/sonic-art
http://soundcloud.com/groups/drone

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 9:31 am. It is filed under Uncategorized and tagged with curation, micro-genre, NetNewMusic, newmusicbox, review, sequenza 21, social networking, soundcloud. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.