What's new

SoundCloud Alternative - SongBox

Yeah I must not be explaining this correctly.

Only you, the account owner, can see your listening data. No-one else can. It can't be shared.

Only you see how your tracks have been listened to.






Thank you for the reply, but I'm a little confused by it. The concept of being able to see who listened to your track and for how long seems to be one of your site's key selling points. If users are able to disable their listening activity from being shared, to me, that's an equally important selling point.
 
I'm finding this really interesting! Thanks so much - it's really helpful to me.

You see.... songbox is not social, at all. No-one in the world except you, the account owner, sees your data like number of plays, average time listened etc. That's just for you.

I'm curious to know what makes you think that songbox has a social network element?




I'm sure you have done a full competitor analysis. I guess I'm a little confused after looking at alternatives that are out in the market and the cost.

Take a look at Disco. While it is definitely not "social" like songbox and soundcloud, what it does do with keeping copies of all your tracks, libraries, playlists and the like, and the fine grain control you have with sending tracks to people is amazing (as are the stats it provides for listens!) . Plus it works on video as well as music - and hosts other associated files with projects too.
Now obviously it is aimed at larger music houses / music supervisors and the like - but the value proposition is on another level compared to where songbox is.

Part of the problem you face has to do with the way market share / markets are generated within the tech/online world. Its problematic going up against a seasoned player like soundcloud when they have the lions share of the market sown up, and yet a lot of the features you are pitching are based around social (therefore needing the social network for that to be valuable for your paying customers). I'm not sure how I'd proceed. I'd guess this is why a company like disco has gone the route of a more b2b model. I really don't see a way for you to move forward and gain market share without following other tech companies, grabbing a tonne of runway cash and burning it to gain market share BEFORE setting a value proposition that professionals can come in and understand / choose to use.
 
Only you, the account owner, can see your listening data.

OK, but when it comes to "John Smith listened to Aftermath for 53 seconds" my concern is whether or not John Smith can opt out of his listening activity being shown to the account owner.
 
Ahhh ok I get you now. In short, no they can't. It was a consideration very early on in the product development cycle.

I spoke to many folk in the industry (as an aside, I was a professional musician signed to a major label for a couple of years and after that I worked in music media for a couple of global brands for several years), amongst whom were editors of well known magazines and grammy winning songwriters. The general consensus was "Don't really care if people know I only listened for 10 seconds".

Further to that - I've updated the copy on the page based on your feedback to make it more clear. You only know the listening information for a specific SongBox. So in theory if I only send it to you, then yeah I will know that you specifically listened twice, for 10 seconds and 46 seconds.





OK, but when it comes to "John Smith listened to Aftermath for 53 seconds" my concern is whether or not John Smith can opt out of his listening activity being shown to the account owner.
 
I'm finding this really interesting! Thanks so much - it's really helpful to me.

You see.... songbox is not social, at all. No-one in the world except you, the account owner, sees your data like number of plays, average time listened etc. That's just for you.

I'm curious to know what makes you think that songbox has a social network element?
Oh - my bad assumptions from looking at early copy / reading forum posts (and it being called a soundcloud alternative, which is social)... more than actually trying it out. So this *is* a disco competitor then?


In which case, I feel my criticism over value then stands. Look at what disco offers for the price. I'm not sure if their model is sustainable from a $ perspective, but it seems to offer the user more value. Its newest incarnation (its just had a redesign) is really quick slick, and the feature set for sharing playlists / individual tracks seem very well thought out and thorough (though you definnitely have some interesting new features in the mix they don't have in regards to how *much* of a song has been listened to. They include videos - which for people in sync is 100% necessary, and an increasinly important part of record company revenue streams)

But the big difference is value. Their minimum solo account (they scale to teams, which will be necessary for your business I would imagine in the future) has 500 songs for $1 more a month (over 300% more), allow downloads (and you can style your own download page with templates), allow downloads in multiple formats (again, extremely useful for deliveries - they auto-make the alternative formats).

So for me as a potential user, I'm not sure I see the value proposition. Where would you see your site sit alongside something like disco?
 
Personally I am happy enough with 128kbps.

Years ago, before I knew what I know now about mastering for steaming, 128kbps files could sound terrible, especially things like cymbals.

Most of the stuff that I stream nowadays sounds much better, even though the bit rate is the same.
Where are you streaming that the 128kbps streams sound acceptable? Soundcloud sounds absolutely awful to me. Bandcamp's encoding might sound a little better, but still not good. I wish all these sites would default to 320kbps. I would probably listen to some music on Soundcloud once in a while if it sounded better.
 
Hi Alex :)

Where are you streaming that the 128kbps streams sound acceptable?

SoundCloud, Bandcamp and YouTube are my main sources of listening nowadays. In order of preference is SoundCloud and Bandcamp with YouTube coming last. Although that is based mostly on how I think audio is processed by YouTube. The reality is I can hardly discern any real difference in sound quality of my own music which I post across all three platforms.

Soundcloud sounds absolutely awful to me.

I am sure we all have different expectations.

I have had a poke around your website to find out more about you as a person. You appear to be a professional mixing/mastering engineer. So that, alone, suggests to me that you have had the necessary training to be able to carry out that work and you would have developed a more critical ear in the process.

You also look like a young person. Although I cannot find an article in the internet to back this up, youger people hear higher frequencies, 10kHz and above, better than older people. I did, however, find this article, which may be related:-


I am 59. About eight years ago I had a hearing test for work. I have a marked problem in one ear, which doesn't hear much over 10kHz. And my other ear isn't much better... Anything about 14kHz is lost to me. I am guessing that that is a problem brought around by listening to music turned up to eleven and never wearing ear protection at heavy metal gigs.

I am also very much a hobbyist and totally self taught in everything I do, music related.

In that part of my post you quoted I mention that "Years ago, before I knew what I know now about mastering for steaming, 128kbps files could sound terrible, especially things like cymbals." That may be in partly because at that time my hearing hadn't deteriorated to the point that it has now.

I will point you to a recent post that was raised about this very subject on the ambientonline.org website, where I am an active member:-


It is suggested by one member there that, in his opinion, SoundCloud is now sounding better than ever. Better than Bandcamp.



cheers

andy
 
Once again thanks for taking the time to input :)

Well I still stand that it's a SoundCloud alternative. Artists use Soundcloud for discovery, yes, but they also use it to send private links to magazines, radio, industry folk etc. That's the part that I see SongBox as an alternative for.

Regards Disco... I didn't know this platform existed and I've been researching this space for a while. May I ask, have you heard of or used Haulix (https://haulix.com)? This is what we used when I was with Universal and I see it's still going strong. There is also DemoBox and a few others (however please check out Haulix if you haven't already).

For me all of these alternatives simply validate the market. Each has a similar core function but offer different things that will be valuable to different people. As you said, SongBox has more in depth reporting and I will continue to refine that. In my opinion, it's also a nicer experience. Some will agree with that and some won't, but as an example, I just signed up to Disco and I found the signup form laborious and a bit off-putting (lots of form fields to fill in and boxes to tick).

Also, upon completion of signing up I got a screen which told me my account was being setup and it would be ready in approx 4 hours. I find this unacceptable and unnecessary for a digital product (and I mean that from a user's perspective as well as a software engineering perspective).

Regards monetary value... with these things you need to set your stall out and see what happens. If everybody worried about what everybody else was charging it would just be a race to the bottom and no-one would prosper.

So in answer to the big question "Where would you see your site sit alongside something like disco?" - Honestly, I see it as one of a few apps of this type and I think it sits alongside it as a competitor just fine. Some people will choose Disco, some will choose SongBox. Some will choose Bandcamp and others Haulix. That's just the way the game works.




Oh - my bad assumptions from looking at early copy / reading forum posts (and it being called a soundcloud alternative, which is social)... more than actually trying it out. So this *is* a disco competitor then?


In which case, I feel my criticism over value then stands. Look at what disco offers for the price. I'm not sure if their model is sustainable from a $ perspective, but it seems to offer the user more value. Its newest incarnation (its just had a redesign) is really quick slick, and the feature set for sharing playlists / individual tracks seem very well thought out and thorough (though you definnitely have some interesting new features in the mix they don't have in regards to how *much* of a song has been listened to. They include videos - which for people in sync is 100% necessary, and an increasinly important part of record company revenue streams)

But the big difference is value. Their minimum solo account (they scale to teams, which will be necessary for your business I would imagine in the future) has 500 songs for $1 more a month (over 300% more), allow downloads (and you can style your own download page with templates), allow downloads in multiple formats (again, extremely useful for deliveries - they auto-make the alternative formats).

So for me as a potential user, I'm not sure I see the value proposition. Where would you see your site sit alongside something like disco?
 
Art - thanks for the comment. I've just finished implementing some ideas by other folk on here. Today I'll look at a free trial for pro! Thanks so much.

Nice feel to the site. Best wishes going forward!
Have you considered offering a trial period at the Pro level? It's kind of difficult to evaluate at the Free level.
 
@synkrotron - I've just implemented your suggestion about showing total time and current time on the tracks.

Here's a link to a test SongBox so you can see it: Test SongBox


Okay... Now that I am streaming that I notice that in your player it doesn't give an indication of how long the track lasts and where the play position is along the track.

If you are just checking in to listen then that doesn't matter but I, personally, like to know how long a piece is before I listen.
 
@SongBox
This platform sounds all very interesting, especially the great stats of how long each track got listened to.

I tried to create a free account to see how I would like the platform but I get the following error after inserting a user name and password and clicking "Get Started" button....

"Error 500
Whoops, something went wrong on our servers."
 
Hi @midiman - I'm delighted you wanted to try out SongBox, thanks so much.

I've just signed up to a new account myself and others have signed up successfully since this message. The only thing I can think is that you signed up while I was in the middle of rolling out new code. And given that I've been doing that all day it's not out of the question.

Would you mind trying again? sorry - I know that's annoying.



@SongBox
This platform sounds all very interesting, especially the great stats of how long each track got listened to.

I tried to create a free account to see how I would like the platform but I get the following error after inserting a user name and password and clicking "Get Started" button....

"Error 500
Whoops, something went wrong on our servers."
 
I'm in much the same boat, and also privacy-minded enough in general to just keep my distance from a site that doesn't let me choose if I want it to share these details. What have you got to lose if you let users opt out of that?
 
Are you referring to the fact that you email address is in the SongBox? If so then I've listened and I'm adding that as a toggle-able (spelling?) feature within the next few days.

I'm in much the same boat, and also privacy-minded enough in general to just keep my distance from a site that doesn't let me choose if I want it to share these details. What have you got to lose if you let users opt out of that?
 
I've had a tonne of feedback in the past week or so. A lot to process, but something that was mentioned enough to make me take notice was how the reporting could be better. So I've made some significant changes.

SongBox used to show you an activity feed of all engagement. However no rather than a feed I just list your SongBoxes with the top line stats in a really easily glanceable way. Hopefully these screen grabs will help illustrate.

Before:
Screenshot 2019-10-25 22.14.48.png

After:
Screenshot 2019-10-25 22.26.50.png

And if you click into "Report" you get track activity:
Screenshot 2019-10-25 22.27.26.png


Does this make sense?
 
Hi Mick :)

A few more random things:-

Are those stats "all time" stats? Is it possible to see daily, weekly and monthly stats too?

What about download stats?

Apologies if you have mentioned this elsewhere.

cheers

andy
 
Top Bottom