Dear SoundCloud,
It’s about fucking time.
Signed,
Everyone.
For years SoundCloud’s app for Facebook pages, which enables page owners to effectively embed their soundcloud content, has been … down. Doesn’t work. No resolution timeframe. Oh well.
In 2011, SoundCloud announced a new player for web developers to embed music from their service. With the new player came standards-compliance with HTML5 (hallelujah), and a loss of customizability (we can no longer specify the colours so it coordinates with our sites). The company has been promising a “dark theme” HTML 5 player so that their audio players aren’t ugly on sites like this one. Still nothing. Seriously, I just want a colour scheme suitable for dark sites. Case in point: have a look at those visually jarring white squares on the OM/ORP sets page. It’s so ugly that it’s part of the reason this site still hasn’t come out of beta.
Meanwhile SoundCloud’s own web site still serves many pages in their old theme. The transition to “new SoundCloud” began well over six months ago. This has been going on long enough, guys. It’s time to abandon the old, and bring full functionality to the new.
I still use a free, no-frills SoundCloud account. Until I see issues resolved for webmasters and Facebook page owners, I will remain dubious of their value as an audio hosting service. In fact, SoundCloud’s greatest asset has long been their easily embeddable and customizable player. I’m quite happy to keep my free account and host my own audio, thank you very much. And I will continue to wait for a SoundCloud-style player for WordPress.
SoundCloud: you’re so close to being really great. Please clean up your messes before you try to move forward.
After some searching, I discovered (thanks to Barbarian Blog) that it is possible to get Facebook to update the text excerpt and preview icon from shared web links by going to the following page:
http://developers.facebook.com/tools/lint/
… just enter your URL, and any Facebook entries pointing to the link will be updated with new content.
There are only a few things left to finish up before juggernautmusic.com is ready to launch. We could launch today, but I feel that the site isn’t quite feature-complete. Here’s what we still have to do (roughly in order of priority)
That standard helvetica-ish thing looks just so … vanilla. Should be an easy fix, but I have to research to find either a pretty standard font or else something that can be delivered very quickly.
Continuing to experiment with the new SoundCloud. I created a set with a few of my tracks in it alongside some friends’ and acquantainces’ tracks (and a couple mixes). Suddenly my play counts have skyrocketed (by the count on the player) although the stats page doesn’t reflect it yet. Perhaps SoundCloud is recommending the set, or tracks within it, as being related to other tracks they may be listening to. In any case this probably gets more plays for everybody who’s included.
So far it includes tracks from Steve Cowan (i.e. me – “nebula”), Arthur Oskan, E.R.A., Hawkeye and Cosmosuave, plus sets from Mike Gibbs and Sarah Shaw-Cowan. A good cross-section of Friends and Idols.
[update 2012-12-20: added two tracks by Flim]
Here’s the set. I will likely continue to add to it.
Actually I was just testing out some parameters on the player, while listening at the same time to this set that SoundCloud thought I would like. I will concede: SoundCloud was bang on.
So I’m really trying hard to embrace the new SoundCloud. To me it is now geared more toward listeners than to contributors. I don’t think I hate it, but to me it seems like a departure from the artist-centric resource I perceived SoundCloud’s original vision to be. To remain afloat we must adapt, however, which is why I can easily forgive them. Besides, they have obviously coded in some psychic powers, because it picked exactly what I wanted to hear before I even knew it myself.
Anyway – have a listen to Marko Fürstenberg throwin’ down some pretty damn fine deep techno for Das Kraftfuttermischwerk, a “German based blog with the thematic focus of visual art, culture and music – especially electronic music”.
Oh, and good morning. Put your dancing slippers on, go make yourself a drink, turn up the volume and clean the house. The track listing can be found here:
http://www.kraftfuttermischwerk.de/blogg/?p=46362
Better throw this one in as well…