Sharing mixes - Soundcloud? Not exactly DJ-friendly on pricing
OK, so I’ve seen people using Soundcloud for their mixes and so I thought I’d give that a look. I’ve only recently started to get back in to mixing and have hosted a few of my new mixes (digi DJing) and a selection of the older vinyl-only mixes on Mixcloud (gratuitous link goes here: Mixcloud).
The thing is, I want to go to SoundCloud but bugger me it’s expensive! Given that the minutes allowance that they state is total, not per month, even 12 hours won’t last long (SoundCloud). I honestly can’t understand how DJs can justify paying for the full business version of €500/year.
Am I missing a trick?
I wonder if people upload the mixes but take them down from time to time and replace with newer ones so as not to go over allowance.
I guess my outlook is different re cost - I’m doing this for fun, not for the money. I haven’t DJd in years - it was 20 years ago that I was spinning rave tracks at a local club on a Saturday night. Now my typical audience is 1. And it’s a dog. And she hates my music.
I may just end up hosting the mixes on my own site with a custom player - that way I can ensure that allowances are not an issue, can provide downloads as mp3/ogg and have a streaming player too.
Yeah, I take down old mixes and put up new mixes. I was going to buy into it, but I think it would be easier and cheaper to just get a custom player and web hosting, y’know?
I love Soundcloud a lot, and I can totally understand their cost system, but I just can’t justify it. If I was making more money doing this, or had more money lying around, I would do it. Though, to be fair, the monthly cost really isn’t that high for their service. More than web hosting but you do get a LOT more.
As a DJ I think the minute restrictions on soundcloud are just too much. I’ve moved to using http://letsmix.com and I’m fairly happy. As far as I can tell there’s no hosting limits. We will see how that lasts, but it has tonium, pioneer, and other big industry names behind it. It’s also much better with tracklists. You can tell it where each track starts so that the player will correctly identify the track playing in the mix.
At this point my suggestion to all DJ’s is letsmix for mixes, and soundcloud for original tracks. I’d really like to know what other people think of the site. I’m pretty much sold on the service, but it seems like everyone else is too busy with soundcloud to even care.
