F*ck Soundcloud



I know this isn't new territory for the blog, but the Soundcloud Police have struck again. This time they took down my Doom mix because of copyright infringement with music owned by Lex Records. Ironically, Lex Records distributed my Doom mix (printed cds and all) to promote Doom's Born Like This album a few years ago (without my permission if you can believe it). I know we've all discussed this issue ad nauseam, but I thought I'd vent a little bit more. If only mixcloud or mixcrate were real, viable alternatives. I guess this is just the nature of the beast. Since our inception, hip hop deejays have essentially been musical pirates. Comes with the territory, I suppose. Maybe the modern day challenge for us is to step our diggin' game up and keep to music that stays below the radars of the copyright cylons.

14 comments:

pipomixes said...

yeah i feel that, soundcloud has been taking down some of my mixes even after they have been up for years. bums me out to have put that much time in and then have it taken down. one of the main reasons why i've slowed down with soundcloud... but we'll find some workarounds, that's what we do!

pipomixes said...

FYI:
i know you already discussed this on your older post but i noticed that if you put around 20 to 30 seconds of other stuff (interviews, scratchin', etc...) it helps you get around copyright filters. they seem to only search the beginning of the file, if it searched the entire mix, everybody's mixes would get taken down...

pipomixes said...

Sorry to hear about that, Pipo.


SoundCloud has two main features: discovery and delivery. On the discovery side, they provide a community and a brand that you can leverage to promote your music (or mixes). On the delivery side, they offer a really slick interface that has streaming, downloads, sharing, and comments.


MixCloud is basically the same service, except it has no downloading, which has probably delayed the inevitable scrutiny from the RIAA. But I think it is safe to say that if you can Shazam it... they will find it eventually. If anything, MixCloud is more tentative, because their content is almost all copyrighted music (whereas SoundCloud seems to be mostly original works).


There is probably no ready substitute for the community and promotional aspects of these two services. On the delivery side, hosting your own audio is still a viable option. Although eventually it will probably face the same scrutiny as the major services.


I think the rule of thumb is that if it can be found on Google, the RIAA will eventually find it and ask you to take it down. I agree that there will probably be a certain threshold of obscurity. But my guess is that within the next 5-10 years, they will have a pretty thorough system in place for finding everything in the Shazam database.


With regard to putting decoy audio at the beginning of a mix. Eventually that will not work because they will update the scan to start the ID'ing process at a random point in the audio.


The only long term solution is to keep the names of copyrighted artists on your site off Google. To most sites, that is a death sentence. But such is the way of the underground.

pipomixes said...

The reason there's been an increase in takedowns is because SoundCloud recently partnered with a company called ZEFR who provide the copyright scanning tech for YouTube. A couple of days ago I had a mix taken down that had been on SoundCloud for nearly 4 years. I've seen a bunch of other DJs saying similar things, so it's likely that they're rescanning people's uploads using the new technology.

Originally, you could fly under the radar because SoundCloud's software would only scan the first few minutes of a mix, so as long as your first song wasn't caught, you'd be all good. That's no longer the case.

I dunno what the answer is. Mixcloud is legal as they've already worked out deals with the relevant people and they pay royalties, but it has restrictions, particularly in the US where users can't see track listings for mixes until after they hit play, they can't skip back in mixes etc. Also, you can't play more than 3 tracks in a mix from the same artist, so it's no good for "Best Of" mixes that cover one artist. No downloads either. I know quite a few people that are using Hear This, but that's gonna attract the wrong kind of attention soon enough and will be forced to bow to the will of the rights holders and their representatives.

pipomixes said...

I just don't get why soundcloud is doing this. 90% of its users content consists of remixed, sampled, or mixed music. It would seem that this will only drive away their user base. Either soundcloud knows something we don't and is way smarter than us, or they're killing their own business model that made them so successful. I really don't see a middle ground here.

pipomixes said...

To clarify, are you suggesting that posting a tracklist to my Doom mix (which I'm not sure whether I did) or calling it a "Doom" mix attracted the spybots?

pipomixes said...

I don't really understand it either, unless they literally have no choice.


Their original business model was to make a site where people uploaded completely original pieces of work, except what made the site successful wasn't that - as you said, it was people uploading mixes, remixes, mashups, and tracks that use samples.



It would make sound business sense to try and strike the same sort of deals that Mixcloud has. Even if that meant being more restrictive and not allowing downloads, at least DJs would stick around because the userbase is so large, even if they'd whine about the new rules for a while. That's why I think they were perhaps forced into this.


One of the reasons why they might not have been able to strike the same deals as Mixcloud is because Mixcloud was set up as a mix hosting site from the beginning. You can't upload single tracks, mashups and remixes. On SoundCloud you can, so it would be difficult to differentiate between someone just uploading a full unmixed song (which obviously wouldn't be allowed) and someone using that song as part of a mix. Maybe SoundCloud had the choice of becoming a Mixcloud clone or being even more harsh with copyright infringement and they went with the latter as that was their original plan anyway.

pipomixes said...

Agree on all points. It would be nice if soundcloud explained their vision for the site going forward. Clearly, things are changing. Personally, I'd like to know what they're trying to do so I can decide to either work with them or find an alternative

pipomixes said...

hmmm, all good stuff to think about when working on a project... to tracklist or not to tracklist?? Big up to you all for the inspiration... Love this DJ sh*t!!

pipomixes said...

It probably doesn't matter how you label or provide tracklists on SoundCloud because it is a known concentration of illegal material. Presumably, it is all being checked, regardless of titles, tags, tracklists, etc.


The problem with using artist names with mixes, outside of SoundCloud, is that the RIAA uses Google (and presumably also has its own bots) to seek out copyrighted works outside of SoundCloud and other known concentrations of illegal uploads. So, let's say you decide to host your own audio, and you labeled it "Best of MF Doom," that would eventually be found (if someone had it in a target list). It often takes months or years, but eventually it will be found.


Outside of the known locations/communities where illegal music is stored, it is how the file is labeled or written about, not the audio itself, that will attract attention. Well, at least for the time being. It is also possible that, at some point, they might be able to mass scan audio, but I don't know how feasible that is or would be. I'm guessing that is a long way out.

pipomixes said...

Definitely avoid "inline" tracklists. The optimal solution for tracklists is to zip/rar the audio and tracklist together. Compressing the files adds an extra layer of protection.

pipomixes said...

I had forgotten about the Mixcloud licensing deal, which does bode well for at least the next few years. That said, I would still not assume that Mixcloud is going to be a long-term solution. Even if their licensing is solid, they might go out of business at some point. And, as you point out, there are numerous restrictions. For me, the restrictions are so nanny-ish that its almost an insult.


That said, Mixcloud is probably the best current service because it has a big community, good SEO, and people are familiar with it. The alternative would be to do something more DIY and self-hosted, but that takes a lot of work.

pipomixes said...

SoundCloud probably doesn't have a lot of choices with regard to licensing content. Licensing is notoriously political and complex. Copyright-holding organizations often pick a winner to get the best deal, rather than offer the same terms to multiple companies.

I don't see evidence, yet, that SoundCloud has a promising business model. They've raised a huge amount of funding, way over $100 million, so I think that means their only viable markets have to be huge. They will need to go head-to-head with services like iTunes or Spotify. I think their funding puts them well beyond their current product, which is basically a cross between Bandcamp, Dropbox, and a social media site.

pipomixes said...

How about Hulkshare, I just remember I have an account on there. Looks like a not as popular alternative to SC, streams and download. I never see mixes or song from there but I see it looks like they're doing their thing somewhere. Just a thought