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This week, Soundcloud, Let’s go -
Soundcloud is an online audio streaming and music sharing platform founded in Stockholm Sweden back in 2007. For you history buffs, Spotify was found in the same place a year earlier and they have been rivals ever since. Soundcloud has a very interactive fan base of listeners and creators - both musicians and podcasters. One of their most coveted features is the commenting feature that allows listeners to share their thoughts anywhere during a stream which is visible to other listeners. For the creators, there are several tools to share work and grow a good audience. The other cool part is that Soundcloud has a very good podcast community.
Currently Soundcloud is considered to be one of the industry standard websites primarily because as a creator you can share and monetize your music, get access to detailed statistics on everything from plays, likes, comments, reposts and downloads. Now Soundcloud boasts over 125 million songs on it’s platform to about 70 million on Spotify. The big difference is the standards, though there are some great songs on Soundcloud the quality of more than a few leaves something to be desired and it is much easier to upload hence the reason for more songs than Spotify. But I would like to think this makes Soundcloud a great testing ground for new artists before moving to Spotify, and a great place to find new up and coming artists and podcasts. In addition to the commenting, the other thing that makes Soundcloud cool is the reposting. There are chains and trading; kindah sorta the same thing, kindah. Repost chains are networks of like minded producers who help each other by reposting when you drop a new track. The tricky part is making sure you are in a good chain. Repost trading is when artists repost comments and like each other's music to expose each other to both fan bases. This helps to grow followers and gain engagements.
Soundcloud has not been without controversy however. Back in 2017 they were about to shut it down and give up the ghost, until some much needed investment money came in right at the nick of time. Then SiriusXM dropped 75 million on them primarily to boost their podcast game - “Won’t he do it!” 🙌🏾
This week's #IAOTW - Independent Artists Of The Week is Stephen Harper, a young talented up and coming guitarist who is featured at the Jazz Jam at Jazz Becuzz tonight.
For more information or to hire Unda The Hat as your brand or label consultant send a message via undathehat.com. See you next Tuesday.