I'm going all Soundcloud - thoughts?

[geequeue]

I find that I'm way too busy these days to track out tunes, but would still like to share them quickly. For this reason, I purchased a Pro Unlimited account on Soundcloud and have started sharing all my flacs with the 'allow download' option. This allows me to 'outsource' the tracking work to the end-user should they want such, but to me the beauty of soundcloud streaming is that you can just click on the wavform to queue up wherever you like.

Just curious if anyone else has gone all-soundcloud and if so, should I be wary of anything associated with its use? The Pro Unlimited account cost 99 Euros a year (about $128 US) with a 30 hour per week upload cap. To me, cost is worth its weight in gold due to my time constraints. Before next year's Wanee Festival I should have more 'best of' stuff tracked out!

https://soundcloud.com/geequeue

[acidjack]

I love SoundCloud for what I use it for (streaming samples of my stuff) but I believe it's downsampling your FLACs into very lossy compressed formats, and that is also what the resulting downloads would be. All the tracks I hear have obvious artifacts, which is alright for sampling a song or two but not, IMHO, archiving.

See this discussion on GS: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/moan-zone/710835-anyone-else-notice-obvious-limiting-soundcloud-when-you-upload-song.html

[geequeue]

I tested that - If I upload a 400MB flac file, it does indeed transcode it, but ONLY for web streaming purposes. When I click the download link, I got the same 400MB flac file back.

[page]

I find that I'm way too busy these days to track out tunes, but would still like to share them quickly. For this reason, I purchased a Pro Unlimited account on Soundcloud and have started sharing all my flacs with the 'allow download' option.

Neato. One question, if you have permission to share, why not just torrent the untracked flac?

[geequeue]

Most honest reason? Pain in the ass.

[page]

Most honest reason? Pain in the ass.

I value honesty!

What makes it more cumbersome than doing the http upload for soundcloud? The torrent creation process and registration or the client?

http uploads are more difficult for me to throttle and instead saturate my home network so I'm adverse to http uploading when/where possible. Different perspective is all.

[404 Not Found]

Love Soundcloud!  You are correct as noted on the DL of the file, as the DL will remain the intact version and format of what was uploaded.  It also streams well on my Galaxy S4 on the listening end...as does Dropbox.  GL!

[runonce]

I have a Premium Account - and doubt I'll be renewing.

Going premium only prolongs hitting the limit a bit longer.

I have a hard time managing music based on minutes...vs..."sets" - too confusing.

When posting on Facebook - on some FB groups - posts have a longer shelf life. (so who knows how long to leave a clip up)

And - I get too many - "wont play" comments on FB too...

[404 Not Found]

Pro Unlimited does not restrict your upload-storage-file sizes...it is as they are advertising "unlimited". 

[geequeue]

Most honest reason? Pain in the ass.

I value honesty!

What makes it more cumbersome than doing the http upload for soundcloud? The torrent creation process and registration or the client?

http uploads are more difficult for me to throttle and instead saturate my home network so I'm adverse to http uploading when/where possible. Different perspective is all.

Yeah, just the whole process and time it takes. Not that I am lazy (I am quite the perfectionist), but I wanted to be able to share as quickly as possible with the least amount of post production. I have 2 separate networks at my disposal, so uploading isn't a big deal.

runonce - I am a step or two above premium at 'Pro Unlimited'. Seems just the case, they cap the uploads at 30 hours per week.

[runonce]

It sounds like you dont really need soundcloud - you dont seem to be want to use the streaming and embedding functions - that seem to be "the product"

Why not just use google drive or dropbox if you dont need the slick front end to publish with?

[geequeue]

It sounds like you dont really need soundcloud - you dont seem to be want to use the streaming and embedding functions - that seem to be "the product"

Why not just use google drive or dropbox if you dont need the slick front end to publish with?

Actually, the streaming part is a HUGE plus to me. i.e. today a friend who wanted one of the sets is driving, I just told her to pull it up and stream until she got home. The other cool thing about the interface is how you can jump to any spot with a mouseclick, somewhat eliminating need to track out the sets. Also, the stats functionality is also pretty handy.

[404 Not Found]

You can stream from Soundcloud as well as from Dropbox.  I think that DB is a much more private re. means of sharing, as to which SC is a public sharing site, noting the "follow" and "search" functions available.

[acidjack]

I have a Premium Account - and doubt I'll be renewing.

Going premium only prolongs hitting the limit a bit longer.

Not any more. Now the $9.99/mo account is truly unlimited.

[rastasean]

I have a Premium Account - and doubt I'll be renewing.

Going premium only prolongs hitting the limit a bit longer.

Not any more. Now the $9.99/mo account is truly unlimited.

He said premium, which I thought was a plan before but now they have pro and pro unlimited. I only briefly looked into the paid plans in the past without any serious consideration.



The thing about online storage is that its a luxury that we enjoy when we sign up but what about when that year has elapsed? It's hard to imagine people would want to continue paying $100+ a year to have access to some tracks/files/pictures when you could buy a $100 hard drive and keep it forever. Online backups do have their time and place, though.