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I noticed many of you have soundcloud premium memberships. I just upgraded when I ran out of space and am enjoying the extra space, featured tracks and ability to replace files.

Is there anything else you find useful soundcloud premium? The stats seem like they might be useful to a recording artist ("Wow! They like this song in Germany. Maybe I should tour there..."), but I'm a production music guy ("Wow! Andy Gabrys listened to my song!" ) Has anyone gleaned any insights from their soundcloud stats?

I like Soundcloud Pro mainly for one feature that I use often. It allows you to re-upload a track while maintaining the same sharing URL. With the free version, you have to delete and re-upload, losing the link you may have shared elsewhere.

Casey

Agree w/Casey. The ability to replace existing files is the #2 main reason I upgraded. The #1 reason is the ability to Spotlight up to five different songs or lists that remain at the top of your profile.

https://soundcloud.com/paulcroteau

Just like the other guys, I love being able to replace files, and being able to spotlight five sets. Also, when you start making and uploading a ton of music, being able to go over 4 hours is an absolute necessity. The stats are interesting, when I look at them... which isn't very often.

~~Matt

The only real "insights" I have gained are the comments that I get at times on tracks. While they may not be along the same lines as a custom Taxi critique, they are still very helpful to me to add to metadata. Other than that, I don't pay too much attention to the "follows" or what countries listeners are in. I have made some really cool friends from SC, though.

With the free version, I don't believe you would "lose your link". You just have to delete the track or just re-name the URL for the old song, and then upload the "new" version and edit the track to have the same URL as the original URL. There was some weirdness though, when doing this with the Facebook SC widget in use; not sure if there is still an issue with that).

All of that said, I just use the 50/year membership level in order to upload new mixes and keep the same comments or stats on the track. Casey may have meant that when he described losing the link, that you would lose the associated stats and info if you upload a new mix or version on the free act.

Soundcloud still has what I consider to be a lot of glitches. For example, notating the track as original is not even a field that is available to edit when first uploading a track (it used to be). The "recommended tracks" they queue up for you is totally not based on what it should be based on, but instead replays tracks you have "liked" and it will play them over and over every time to re-log in. It was serving me ads on my paid account (audio ads). This happened twice so far. The user interaction is kind of clunky and clumsy, but oh well; the social interaction aspect is great and I like it a lot for that. It seems SoundCloud is trying very hard to be bought (by another company) and make lot of money, but in the meantime, they just keep changing the user interface and some of the functioning, and they break things along the way, it seems. And why they are allowing thousands of copyrighted songs to be uploaded (by DJ's doing remixes etc) is beyond me. But that's another topic.

Soundcloud is pretty central to a lot of basic musician interaction. I use it every day. It's pretty great overall. If you can get by with the free version, more power to you. That's 50 bucks in your pocket. (though I just re-upped my membership today, because I wanted to upload a new mix).

I haven't found a use for premium. I have a limited use of SC as an online business card type of thing. I think it's fun to follow what music folks are doing, and it's the most practical platform out there, imo. But I have no use for stats and technical features, at least not at the moment.