how to start using soundcloud to find great music and new artists you’ll love!
Well, of course you’ve heard about soundcloud, and you know that’s a place with music, the “flickr for audio”.
But you sign up, and find your empty dashboard. That’s exactly what happened to a friend, whom I convinced to open an account on “the new myspace” (a fantastilion light-years ahead!), that’s how I explained him the thing.
Since it can be frustrating for a new user, and since I like soundcloud, and since i think it is not only meant for musicians, I came up with the idea of this howto. The “services-to-enjoy-new-music” topic could and should be expanded [note: please do so and suggest other links etc..!], and should actually at least include extension.fm, wearehunted.com, hypemachine, stereomood, thounds, tumblr, just to name a few other great music-related things.
soundcloud actually provides a great experience for “simple” listeners. Thanks to the twitter-like following function, one can have in real time news about the bands / musicians through an asymmetric link (i.e. users who you choose to follow do not have to confirm). So if you like Röyksopp you get to know the latest updates from norway in real time!
Or, say, you have been keen on flowers lately, and Flying Lotus comes up with (other) new things. By following the “right” users on soundcloud you have all this in your dashboard!
Moreover, when people favorite a track on soundcloud you get notifications too. This is, let’s say, the “discovery mode” of soundcloud, which allows you to get in touch with nice stuff, just by accessing the dashboard! So, to make it short, here is a list of soundcloud’s staff profiles favoriting tracks regularly (in no particular order):
here you have some labels:
and band /artists pages:
Of course, this is not meant to be an exhaustive list. It is just some of the users on soundcloud i follow, including many different styles and hopefully also a suggestion for those not familiar with soundcloud yet!
In fact, an excellent and growing list of what’s hot on soundcloud can be found on the official tumblr (and a couple of other tumblelogs i can’t find anymore..!) updated every day.
If you like the idea, i would be glad to expand the list and add your suggestions (I can’t figure out how to add disqus here, so if you want to share some links just drop me an email, tweet or whathever, and I’ll add them!)
Enjoy soundcloud. And follow me for getting updates about my favorite tracks!
edit: check this out! Result of musichackday in Barcelona.
