The Awesomeness of Soundcloud

My band is currently in the process of writing our first proper album.  It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time now and due to a recent line-up change that’s been forced on us we saw it as an ideal time to take stock and start fresh, new line-up, new songs and a new name (as yet undecided – suggestions welcome!).

Previously we had always written songs in a haphazard kind of way, probably the same way lots of bands do it.  We’d start jamming at a rehearsal, stumble upon an idea that we all liked then over the next couple of rehearsals we’d fashion it into a song structure, write some lyrics and a melody an bob’s your uncle – a song!  This haphazard approach always left us feeling like we’d never really finished our songs, that they were always rushed.  There was always another gig coming up that we would want to play the new song at while we were still excited about it, then another idea would come along and we’d start work on that instead.

This time we decided that we would try to write in a more organic, collaborative kind of way.  We also agreed that we would take our time and not rush any ideas through, we were actually taking time out, away from gigging to properly write a set of songs that will hopefully have sense of cohesion and most of all, honesty about them.  We are still very much at the beginning of this process, and we haven’t yet set a deadline on finishing which has taken the pressure off a bit.

The way we had been working was to record ideas and jam sessions on a laptop, then I would get a rough mix together the next day and email an mp3 to all of the guys in the band.  This didn’t work particularly well, particularly if I was sending multiple mp3′s at once due to mailbox limits on certain users email accounts etc.  In addition to this there was no way for us all to engage in any kind of online discussion easily about the tracks or ideas, short of emails bouncing around all over the place which is difficult to keep track of.

Enter Soundcloud:

Soundcloud is an online service that lets you easily share music with others.  If you think of it like a kind of flickr for audio then you can probably get the idea of what it’s about.

With Soundcloud you can decide who has the ability to listen and download the tracks you upload.  This means I can upload our latest demo’s and song ideas to my Soundcloud account and then share those tracks with my fellow band members.  They receive a notification in their email inbox that new tracks are available and they can log in to their individual Soundcloud account and start listening straight away.  There’s even an iPhone app so that band members with an iPhone can listen to the tracks on the go, wherever they are.

One of the best things about Soundcloud is the ability for people to comment on the track.  What’s more, users can comment on the timeline of the track, so effectively they can comment on particular parts of a song.  This gives us a great platform for us all to discuss ideas and demos, in our own time.  Basically, we all have full time jobs and we can only get together a couple of times a week most of the time so doing things in this way is a huge help to us.  All discussions about a track are recorded and we can refer back to them, at any time, anywhere – even from a mobile phone.

Soundcloud Comments

Let’s get Widgety…

In addition to being able to share tracks with other soundcloud users and via email, you can also use soundcloud widgets to share your tracks with a much wider audience.  You can insert widgets into your blog, on your website, facebook, twitter or pretty much anywhere else on the internet.  From our perspective this will allow us to post demo’s of tracks on our blog and get feedback from fans.

Free is good…

You can get a soundcloud account now, for free, nada, zip.  There is no limit on file sizes and no overall data cap.  The only restriction is on the number of minutes of music you can store.  Currently this is 120 minutes.  If you need more minutes you can sign up for a premium account for as little as €29 per year.  Premium accounts offer a whole host of other features including improved stats, customisable player widgets and more.