After receiving a bit of encouragement (let’s not call it nagging) from a bunch of musicians who love the SoundCloud service, I’ve added a Dropbox to my sidebar. There it is, just under the Search bar. That way, if you want to send me one of your songs, you can just click it, upload – and I’ll get it in my Soundcloud Inbox.
I quite like the service – even though you can only upload 5 tracks a month without paying. It’s useful for promo-ing, for sharing tracks with people you’re working with and also for putting songs on your own site (though Bandcamp does that one better).
Here’s an example.
It does raise the question - why would you send me your songs? I don’t review music on this site. I don’t manage or book bands. I don’t even offer feedback. Probably won’t even tell you whether I like it or not (because sometimes I just don’t).
I’m more than happy to listen to your music, and happy to have this service at hand that makes it easy for you to send it to me – but I’d be curious to find out why you might feel it’s worth your time and energy to do so.
I promise to do nothing more than listen to it – and even that may not happen immediately…
Some people have cautioned me that I’m opening the floodgate – but I’m curious to see what turns up – and suspect that most people will figure they have better and more important people to send their music to.
I’ll let you know what turns up.
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15 Comments
That was neat. (Yeah, I said “neat”)
I uploaded a tune just for shivits and giggles. It was actually the easiest upload experience I have ever encountered. On top of that it was also the easiest site I have ever registered with.
Why can’t every site be that easy? My guess is all the AD space taking up so much space and load times (for all the really crappy Flash animations) on sites like Myspace or iMeem.
No expectations and no worries regarding your listening to the tune.
It is a short little piece of chilled trip-hop with a little American political commentary thrown in. It was fun to make and the samples of (my) American politicians spouting their honesty is quite revealing.
Thanks for tipping me on to the site. It might have been ages before I found it on my own.
Cheers,
Milton
Sent you a track. Why? Thanks for asking.
Your rss feed alone has over 3000 readers.
If even 3% of those ever look at your soundcloud, that’s great exposure.
It also seems you and your blog readers are a pretty eclectic bunch and at least some of them might like the weirdo music I do.
It is great how you assist aspiring musicians with your page. There is a entertainment consultant firm named Schofield and Company LLC (www.schofieldandcompany.com) that offers FREE assistance to all who seek stardom in the music industry. I volunteer my services through this company to all who aspire to make it in the music industry. Most of my collegues who are also A&R’s of major labels volunteer also. I just wanted to make you aware of this company and I will forward them your blog url to see if they can link you to their page at:
http://www.schofieldandcompany.com/wordpress
Please keep up the good work and may god bless you for what you are doing.
“Might as well pack it all in…”
I joined the brigade in sending the song.
Atul from DonkeyBox
http://www.donkeybox.co.uk
I sent one in too. Mostly just to test out Soundcloud. :D I agree with Milton; the upload process was really nicely designed. Easier than basically anything else I’ve used, (e-mail included) except sending over IM, and maybe Dropbox.
same as everyone else, i was playing with tagcloud, ha.
I too, have joined the masses and sent one in…..hope you dig the NYC sounds Andrew!…..and I agree Soundcloud seems very user-friendly and streamlined….I wonder when Videocloud might come out….
The t+c’s state they can play, distribute our music if we upload.
I subscribe to the, they need to hear your music theory to know about it and or buy it, but should we be considered about giving it away all away.
Dave
i sent you a track also – and listed it as public for all to check out – excellent site – thanks for the heads up
I figured “what the hell. Let me add some hip hop to the mix”.. lol.
It’s really cool how easy it is to sign-up once a track has been sent.
I think maybe SoundCloud should be paying you for your promotional services. I haven’t seen a negative response here yet.
I actually introduced it to a colleague over the weekend and given how we work together on opposite ends of the states;
SoundCloud makes it extremely easy for me to send him a track I am working on – Then he can make notes about specific events in the track – So that when I play it back his notes pop up along the time line under the wave file graphic in the player.
Brilliant for this type of writing / editing process which is the backbone of the “Soundtrack, scores & cues” arena of writing.
Thanks again for the post!
i have been enjoying the soundcloud service too… mostly because i love their player. I too have wondered what having a drop-box on my blog would do to my life so i’m interested to hear what happened to you because of it. Please keep us posted.
p.s. thanks for all the great articles and tips. I have really enjoyed this site.
I really like the SoundCloud service! I’m unfortunately not really using it that much longer as I haven’t been producing music for a while though.
Speaking of SoundCloud, have you tried SoundCloud’s friends’ Spotify by the way? It’s an on-line music streaming service that has gained quite alot of praise and is now freely available from the UK. (http://www.spotify.com). If you’re not in the UK just send me a mail and I’ll send you an invite.
And oh, by the way, thanks for this great site. I recently discovered and I really enjoy the articles!
Music requires an audience and even if you make no direct reference to someone’s music, you never know where it could lead. Some of us don’t know of a better place to send it let alone good strategies to get it heard!
I like the concept of this service although the limit of 5 songs is quite disappointing. Maybe you could dedicate a post at the end of a month and upload all the songs so that many more people are able to listen to them, that is if the composer agrees as well. I would personally like to hear these type of songs.