Soundcloud to roll out advertising 
I got an email from Soundcloud stating that they will be rolling out advertising so I cancelled my pro subscription. I really don’t want ads to interrupt where my listeners listen to music. This is why I have been paying for the service and now I’m feeling frustrated that the platform is changing from the model that made it popular because I was depending on it!
Get bent Soundcloud.
-Steve
That seems a little harsh. As i understand it, i is only the creator accounts that will display the ads.
I also got the email but couldn’t quite work out what they were getting at.
I’m assuming it’s a bit like YouTube when i play a video and it plays an advertisement video first?
SoundCloud is getting worse unfortunately
Sound cloud has fell off, big time.
Pretty sure I’ll be moving to hearthis.at
It’s gone down the pan big time.
First they get rid of classic, make the website a load of bollocks.
Destroy the phone app (Even though it was crap before)
Don’t have a website that displays on your phone browser, meaning the only time I can do anything is when Im at home on the mac.
And now adds.
Load of horse sh*t!
I see a positive in this.
My hope would be that by enabling labels to monetize and run ads, that’ll make it less likely that mixes will be pulled. I’d rather have a mix with pre-roll ads or something, rather than no mix at all.
I’ve been feeling the frustration with SC for some time, but am going to hold fire on cancelling anything and see how this pans out first.
It’s not completely clear how the ads will work yet, but I get the impression it’s only for the invited Premier accounts, so if I wanted to listen to music from a major label or artist, then I’d hear an advert; but if I’m listening to indie artists or bedroom producers, then they’d be ad free. I guess we’ll find out.
Somebody else mentioned on another thread, Kim Dotcom’s new site Baboom might blow everything out of the water.
FYI you can register interest for early access invitations on the site now… that’s pretty new because I don’t think you could a few days ago.
Not sure how this ad thing will work, but I if have to hear ads prior to every track I hear on SC I’ll be very upset. I follow over 1000 artists, which a feed that takes hours each week to listen to. Adding more time to that with ads would be disappointing and discouraging.
This is off-topic, but I always wished there was a way to follow all my SC artists on other sites (Beatport/Traxsource/Mixcloud) with just one click; some kind of program to bridge them all together.
I mentioned it a few times. It could potentially change the way the music industry works forever. He wants to push out labels so money goes to artists directly. I feel like he’s the one true business man who cares about the world instead of just more and more money.
I signed up for early access… I really can’t wait to see what happens with it. Could be ‘Napster big’ in its impact.
I think the main problem will be promoting the work of lesser known artists, which is something labels usefully do now… it might end up hurting the diversity in, say, house music, which is what I’m most interested in.
That part is true, but Kim is a clever guy. I’m sure he’ll find a way to make sure lesser artists can get up there, maybe even having a search function that allows you to find anything with less than 1000 hits for example. Who knows? I’m in for house as well, based off his interviews about it, I don’t think there will be an issue with smaller names being shunned. The pay optional part of this also interests me, I just can’t wait to see how it goes.
[quote=“JZed, post:11, topic:67689, username:JZed”]
I mentioned it a few times. It could potentially change the way the music industry works forever. He wants to push out labels so money goes to artists directly. I feel like he’s the one true business man who cares about the world instead of just more and more money.
[/quote]I’m suspicious of any business that tries to market itself as caring about the music and not the bottom line. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely many businesses that really care about the music, but every business cares about the bottom line. It would be impossible to function as a business otherwise—and why wouldn’t it be a non-profit organization if it really didn’t care about the money?
Take Soundcloud, for example. Soundcloud gave a social media platform for musicians to promote themselves independently. But then they probably realized they can make a lot more money out of it through advertising because they have a huge consumer base at their disposal. If this wasn’t planned from the beginning (to gain popularity then capitalize on it), they probably realized it later on.
This is exactly how I read their description of the service, which means only ‘creator’ level accounts (hint: expensive, pro label etc) will have the ability to place ads of their possible choosing, in order to monetize their thousands to hundreds of thousands of plays.
This is no reason to quit soundcloud, personally as it will not affect people that listen to my stuff, nor will it effect any of the things I listen to on soundcloud because it is mostly indie/bedroom artists and DJs such as myself anyway.
People get all riled up for no reason when they half understand the topic, without bothering to research or wait it out and actually experience it before judging it.
Call me a stone-hearted cynic, but… as long as soundcloud keeps its large and active user base, I’ll keep putting my mixes on it.
We’ll see how many people this chases off, but I can’t imagine it having a significant impact. Seems like one of those things that’s a big deal to DJs but not to listeners.
If it turns into something like Pandora where we have to have adds every 3 songs we listen to, or the listener has to pay to remove adds, then I think this will run listeners away. However, the way I read the email was that the “creators” will get slices of the ad revenue so i’m not sure what constitutes a “creator”. If they start paying artists %'s based on listens, likes or what ever else it could be good. Those businesses that take money to buy soundcloud likes and plays will grow tremendously.
The basic soundcloud will remain the same. The ads would only show up on the new “creator” account pages, which are completely separate accounts than the regular pro accounts. They invited me to change over due to high plays, being with them since beta etc, but i’m not in USA so a waste of time atm 
As long as adguard blocks the ads, who gives a shit eh.
I don’t see how this is a benefit for DJs. Producers, sure, if you can acquire enough hits to attract the advert attention. But since most DJs don’t own the tracks they use in mixes, they can’t really profit from any ads.
I would also imagine there’s going to be more spam and hype from the SoundCloud click farms now that’s there’s real money involved in getting plays/favorites/reposts.
It’s not. But then Soundcloud has never been designed for DJs, or intended as a place for DJs to upload mixes. Quite the opposite in fact.
It’s been mentioned elsewhere but the problem with Soundcloud is that a vast chunk of it’s content (DJ mixes) is completely at odds with it’s own terms of use. They are showing more & more signs of cracking down on this, making Soundcloud increasingly unfriendly towards DJs (in effect making it closer to it’s original concept)- in the process alienating a huge chuck of it’s user base.
It’s got a long way to go yet but it could end up with the situation where they succeed in getting Soundcloud to where they want it, only to find it’s traffic plummets as a huge % of it’s users are forced elsewhere.
The phrase cutting off your nose to spite your face springs to mind, but I imagine they are being forced into it by the terms they originally agreed with the major labels.