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0 pointscellover10y ago0 comments

As a music producer I pay 79 EUR / year since 2011 because I enjoy having a practically unlimited storage space for my own productions, may it be a complete song or stems (individual instruments) that I share with musicians I collaborate with.

80% of the tracks on my account are private. I mostly use Soundcloud as a musical post-it system so I can easily listen to my productions in different settings (car, friend's hifi system, earphones etc.), share tracks with label in a "secure" fashion.

I was really saddened to see they introduced ads even for people who actually pay for their service, I felt literally betrayed and angry but fortunately it did not last long. However it leaves traces.

I still find it amazing that they did not introduce basic filters for the stream, like "just grab house mixes at least 45 minutes long"...

Anyway, I am still quite happy with the service even if I could do the same on my own dedicated server, minus the social network thing.

I just wish them good luck but I hope that their longevity will not be due to ads served even to subscribers...

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toomuchtodo10y ago· 4 in thread

Do you have backups of your tracks into case Soundcloud goes away?

EDIT: Its on my to do list to write a pipeline for Soundcloud for Archive Team this weekend. Just in case. That doesn't pickup private tracks though. Backup your stuff!!

jeffbr1310y ago

At my company we have a bunch of content that's only archived on SoundCloud. The main barrier I've had to backing up original uploads (only available through the web interface) is the terrible reliability of all the AJAX calls. Even with browser automation, it requires a LOT of error-handling just to navigate between resources successfully.

It seems that all these microservices[1] are there for the sake of blogging about using microservices[2] as there haven't been any new significant new features delivered in years, and the whole application now seems to be delivered through AJAX calls.

[1]: https://developers.soundcloud.com/blog/building-products-at-... [2]: http://philcalcado.com/2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_micro...

toomuchtodo10y ago

Have you tried using youtube-dl? It extracts the relevant data from Soundcloud's JSON API to perform the download:

https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

I know you mentioned originals are only accessible through the web interface, but I was not sure if you were aware of the JSON API.

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zimpenfish10y ago

I seem to be getting originals through the JSON interface - the MD5s of the downloaded m4as match the MD5 of the m4as I've got in Audioshare.

celloverOP10y ago

Yes I have all the originals on my music computer, plus do regular backups of all my music projects to my dedicated server.

I'm not afraid to loose what I created. 8 years ago, I lost 200 tracks. When I realized it, I decided consciously to make it a good experience, no grief at all.

I found it to be a formidable opportunity to start fresh, change my process, change my habits and create more!

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