Create some motion motion
Create some noise noise

Bandcamp versus SoundCloud: Online Music Sharing Services, Fight!

by Peter Kirn

The wonderful wire to the ear beats me to raising the question of which online music sharing service should rule them all, Bandcamp or the just-public SoundCloud.

I’ll be taking both for a test drive, but as I’m looking at them, any other services we should be considering for a prize fight? Any first impressions on which you like best?

Be sure to vote in wire to the ear’s poll, too; we’ll be watching.


Bandcamp Screencast from Ethan Diamond on Vimeo.

, , , , , , , , ,
20
  • http://alonetone.com sudara

    Sound Cloud has some amazingly creative features – Commenting on the waveform is probably one of my favorites. The developers are very responsive (I was an early beta tester) and fun loving guys.

    Bandcamp is going for a different slice of the pie it seems – less community and more pimping you out to have a great landing page. I love their simplicity and straightforward take and their attempts to keep things hi-fi.

    I humbly offer my top pick (with the not so humble disclaimer that I'm the lead developer): http://alonetone.com

    Open Source. Run by a Musician. No genres. No company involved. Just people and music.

  • http://www.nk-e.com George Napier

    Wow. Simply, wow.

    Love the reporting feature.

    Agree with the above comment: Different slices of the pie. No reason you can't run with both though…

  • papertiger

    I'm curious as to why virb is not in the test/running — granted, it's not as "nice"(?), but it seems to get the job done. . .

  • http://www.createdigitalmusic.com Peter Kirn

    Thanks, sudara! I'll absolutely be checking that out.

    Well, actually, maybe it makes no sense to look at the issue this way. We have lots of overlapping tools. So things like virb are built as full-blown, MySpace-killing music sites. What was interesting to me about Bandcamp / SoundCloud etc. was that they focus (SoundCloud in particular with the dropbox) almost completely on the music hosting side. So that'd be closer to the way a lot of us use things like Flickr or Vimeo, where we use some of those internal community features, but the main draw is the ability to upload there and then integrate with other communities and blogs.

    But, you know, it's almost impossible now to be on top of all of these things, so keep them coming … I welcome more nominees!

  • http://www.keyofgrey.com Sean

    Bandcamp looks pretty good. I like that you can set the price for different quality levels of your songs.

    I agree with the above comments that Bandcamp and SoundCloud serve different purposes: Bandcamp is more for getting your music to your fans; SoundCloud is better at letting other music creators know what you're up to.

    Thanks for tipping us off to both resources!

  • http://www.createdigitalmusic.com Peter Kirn

    Yeah, that's my impression looking deeper into it. So maybe not a prize fight so much as a guide to different tools is needed … we'll be on it. Keep the tips coming, tipsters.

  • http://rvjaeger.com Ryan Jaeger

    I like this A LOT.

    However when their system renames the actual files, they should format them "Artist_-_Album_-_Track#_-_(Disc#)_-_Song Title." They should probably add file summary info if at all possible, as well.

    There are many people who prefer to browse their music w/o an application, and if you extracted the music as they have it now you couldn't sort by artist.

    Either way it's a start to a good system, but if they want to do it right, they should include all the basic info in the file name, and file info – not just the id3 tags.

  • leo cavallo

    As far as I know Bandcamp.mu is the only option if you need a platform for selling your music on-line, 100% independently and without any extra fees (well, beside Paypal's fee).

    I just created my personal account/page (leocavallo.bandcamp.mu – sorry for the spam!) and I'm loving it.

  • http://www.wiretotheear.com/ Oliver Chesler

    Thanks Peter… and I have to say CDM is a daily must read for anyone into music.

  • http://www.icompositions.com/artists/MMI georgn

    I've been using iCompositions.com for a number of years now I've been a very happy camper. MacJams.com serves a similar audience.

    There's also macidol.com, virb.com, jamendo.com, last.fm, myspace.com.

    I've been playing with Soundcloud. And I would have uploaded to bandcamp.mu except their insistence on 16-bit versus 24-bit means I have some transcoding to do first… Now that the beta is over and the pricing for soundcloud has been released, I'm wondering if I'll continue to bother.

    We live in interesting times.

  • http://www.institutfatima.org paul rose
  • http://www.institutfatima.org paul rose

    ithinkmuisc.com I mean. Ups someone can edit my post?

  • Pingback: links for 2008-10-14 « Jay’s blog

  • Pingback: New Urban Music Blog

  • http://www.postlude.co.uk Jamie

    There is also the freesound project, which has a slightly different emphasis, focusing on sounds rather than 'music' or 'songs'. Shame it doesn't have a nice API for embedding player applets in your own websites etc.

  • Chris

    Sundara — wow, your free music-sharing site feels just right…an attractor for music ^giving^. A work of love indeed.

  • Jock

    As a sound cloud user I can personally say that I hate it and I want it to die.

    Bandcamp looks a lot nicer both in external viewing and setup for the artist.

  • Pingback: Create Digital Music » What’s New From Ableton in Videos: Live, APC, Max for Live; Thoughts on Share

  • Pingback: Create Digital Music » Drop.io: Dead-Simple, Quick Music File Sharing Workflows, Now Real-time

  • http://www.spleen-musical.com Spleen

    Nous somme sans doute blaser, mais les avancer technologique sont vraiment fantastique, pouvoir enregistrer sa musique et la mettre sur les nuage, en partage est vraiment … grand

    Ce site est une source de creativité

A link to the archives