Review : SOUNDCLOUD
- Kevin Evans
- Sep 15, 2017
- 2 min read
SoundCloud has been a lightening rod in the music industry much in the same way Napster and File sharing was in the late 90's and early 2000's. The company found early success and a lot of fanfare for it's allowance of Mixsets and remixes uploads from big name and bedroom Deejays and producers. This gave everyone an even playing field when promoting and access new music and mixes and allowed the massess to consume this material at no cost.
From 2008 until 2013 I would upload my mixes, my radio shows and even my own production work onto this glorious website. In 2012 I decided to go Pro and purchase the Pro version of the service. At first this decision was well worth the money, there was greater information display, a wider ability to customize your own embeeded players and a few other abilities that made it worth it.
After several years of on going service and no interruptions about 6 months into my Pro account service I started to notice issues popping up.
At first the service would go down, then my mixes would be flagged and finally I would have to fight to keep my original production songs on the site, it went from being by and far the greatest DJ hosting service to the farthest thing from the best DJ service.
In 2014 I decided to cancel my pro subscription as the legal issues became front and center and the company made public statements advising it's customer base that indeed they were not able to host DJ mixes any longer. This confirmed the demise of what honestly was the best service out there (and yes I know Reverb Nation and BandCamp are great services but SC was THE best for some time).
It's incredibly unfortunate that since I canceled my pro subscription the service has gone through many changes and just hasn't been able to find it's best footing again, since late 2016 there have been constant rumors of the company's imminent demise and it's possible saviors - these rumors and stories have done nothing but fuel the exit of both pro and free customers who - like myself originally used the site for personal use and came up against their strike system.
Unfortunatly my original account was taken away which resulted in a loss of fans, plays and history which just caused me to stick with another service - MixCloud.
At this time I would have to rate this service as SHADY.
SHADY because they still promote the use for bedroom dj's and still haven't found the same cure that services like MixCloud, Hear This and now MixBank have provided - until then I warn you - use the site to explore and listen but don't upgrade just yet.
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