Publishing your music on soundclick.com

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Initial use of the site is free. This provides streaming content in either low-bandwidth (for modem based internet visitors) or high-bandwidth modes. The low bandwidth mode is almost so lo-fi as to be unlistenable. Lo-fi is like listening to a band through a telephone handset speaker. The high bandwidth mode is a little better, if your listeners have cable internet (ADSL or DSL).

The advantages of this system are threefold: firstly, it is free; secondly, it provides a website for those with no knowledge of HTML or FTP or any of the other arcanities you need to host music on your own website; and thirdly, it enables you to visit other musician forums and then hear (and link to) their tracks online.

The interface for the free web hosting is bland yet serviceable. You can deliver streaming content, and site visitors can play your tunes online for free. Not bad at this price point!

If you want to improve on the basic service, you can try the paid-up version. For US $15 a month you can have a site with visitor statistics, an enhanced screen presentation (including Shockwave Flash animations) and MP3 downloads. At this point you can deliver "CD quality" recordings and get rated on a chart system, see the download stats, and accept feedback from users (either via an online message board, or via a "Hot" or "flop" feedback rating). You can market your music CDs online. I signed up to see what the additional benefits would be. Here is my paid up site:

I released a couple of tracks in different genres - some string quartets, a TV theme, some electronic music, an orchestral stageshow song backing track, a "cool jazz" blues, and a funk track, and some others - various original flotsam and jetsam from my home recording demos over the last year or two.

The first problem I had was categorizing my recordings in the various music genres. Soundclick.com provides these preset genres (in bold) and subgenres.

Acoustic
Acoustic Folk, Acoustic General, Acoustic Guitar, Acoustic Piano, Acoustic Rock, Acoustic Vocals,Folk
Alternative
Alt Power Pop, Alt Punk, Alternative General, Avant Rock, Brit Pop, Experimental,Grunge, Indie,Other Alternative,Ska
Beats
Beats General, Classical,Electronica,HipHop,Instrumental - Gangsta,Instrumental - Smooth Jazz,Latin,Pop,Rock,Scratch,Urban
Blues
Blues General, Blues Rock, Country Blues, Jump Blues, Straight Ahead Blues
Classical
Baroque, Chamber Music,Choral ,Classical General ,Contemporary ,Ensembles, Film Music, Medieval, Opera, Renaissance, Symphonic
Comedy
Adult Comedy, General Comedy, Political Humor, Prank Calls
Country
Alternative Country, Bluegrass, Christian Country, Country and Western, Country General Country Swing, Country-Pop, Rockabilly, Traditional Country
Electronica
Acid, Ambient, Breakbeat, Dance, Drum n Bass, Electronica, Euro, Experimental Sounds, Games Soundtrack, House, IDM, Industrial, Jungle, Mellow, Noise, Techno, Techno Hardcore, Trance, Tribal,Trip Hop
Hip Hop
Alternative Hip Hop, Bass Rap, Battles/Disses, Christian Rap, Freestyle, Hardcore Rap, Hip Hop General, New School, Old School, Positive Vibes, Spoken Word
Jazz
Acid Jazz, Bebop, Dixieland, Free Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Jazz General, Jazz Vocals, Smooth Jazz Swing
Latin
Cuban, Flamenco, General Latin, Latin Jazz, Mariachi, Merengue, Pop/Balada, Salsa
Metal
Alternative Metal, Death/Black Metal, Goth Metal, Heavy Metal, Industrial Metal, Rap-Metal
Pop
AAA, Beach, Contemporary Christian, Contemporary Gospel, Euro Pop, J-Pop, Musical, Pop General, Pop Rock, Power Pop
Rock
Christian Rock, Classic Rock, Folk Rock, Goth Rock, Guitar Rock, Heavy Metal, Instrumental Rock, Progressive Rock, Punk Rock, En Espanol, Rock General, Rock n Roll, Rock Unplugged, Southern Rock, Surf Rock
Urban/R&B
Black Gospel, Funk, Funky R&B, R&B/Soul/Pop, Smooth R&B, Soul
World
New Age, Reggae, Traditional African, Traditional Arabic, Traditional Asian, Traditional Celtic, Traditional European, Traditional Hawaiian , Traditional Indian, Traditional Irish, Traditional Spanish, World Fusion, World General

At this point I was lost. I was unsure of what constituted "Acid Jazz" or "World Fusion". I guess they let the artists choose the label arbitrarily and hope for the best.

Any music fragment of less than about 90 seconds won't be listed on the charts. So my
TV theme (by far the most convincing and sophisticated work musically) was instantly
eliminated from fame and fortune.

Further, if you label your tracks in the wrong genre (I initially put a Charleston into "HipHop" rather
than Jazz:Dixieland) you won't chart as highly. It is easy to go back and change the label/genre retrospectively for each track, however.

Second, you discover that if you are a paid-up member your music tracks seem to appear higher on the charts. But on legal advice I am pleased to report this was only an illusion, as I signed up for the paid site almost before I saw my chart rankings for the first time.

Third, you discover that after four downloads in the first day (including your own) you will chart in the twenties in some less popular music genres. After two days and thirteen visitors/listeners to your track, you will chart in the Top 10. This is somewhat of a vanity publishing deal. But at least my mother can see that my music lessons were money not wasted. And she can also listen to a variety of artists whose parents evidently didn't spend very much on music lessons. Welcome to the talent cesspool! You can also, for $5 per day, have a single track featured on the subgenre listing main page as a "Promo Song of the Day" - or for $100, you can be featured as an artist on their opening page, rotated with other self-promoting musicians. Ah - the price of fame!

But let's emphasize the positives - the chart positions are at least validated to an extent by real site visitor statistics (for paying members). And the bottom line is that chart presence means that for people who "surf the charts" and listen, a high ranking promotes further attention. Ultimately, it is not much use to the professional musician unless you manage to sell CDs from it. Or at least justify the cost of your music tuition.

After a couple of days, I checked my chart positions:

But seeing the site visitor statistics tells a more realistic story (herein the brutal truth about my apocryphal chart "success":

And the rest of the stats page looks like this:

and this:

Soundclick.com provides some fancy support for music uploads and downloads - you don't need to be technical or web-savvy to create a web presence for your music. You would need more technical ability to record your MP3 in the first place.
The standard of online talent is quite varied. Uploaded content is barely filtered, except for extreme profanity, so I guess there is no real criticism here. There is some good variety of talent and material in any case. There is also some content which is musically devoid of any quality whatsoever. "Just like real radio" I hear you cry. And you'd be correct.
Is soundclick.com simply a vanity music publishing venture? Does it merely swap the musician's dollars for false acceptance? Well, the statistics don't lie. I'm famous, I'm in the Classical-Chamber Music top ten, with 13 listeners. So much for my "street cred".

Conversely, you may view soundclick.com as a website provider selling hard disk and HTML for nominal prices to musicians as a niche market. There's certainly enough free real estate here to allay concerns about rampant riff-off commercialism.
In short: the free site is great for artists on a limited budget; the paid-up site offers a host of more powerful features. This, on balance, is an excellent model.
Is soundclick.com an over-rated music circus and a day-care centre for musician wannabees? Well I guess it depends whether your mother recognizes your face on internet radio...

Steve Smith is a trans-genre freelance Acid Death Metal Didgeridoo player with a preference for Trip Hop Rap and andalusophone.

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