Stop Hounding Me Soundcloud! I Was Only Looking!

I’m uncertain about you SoundCloud. You said you did podcasting, but I’m not so sure you know the deal. You don’t seem to know what the hell you’re doing when it comes to speech-focused audio.

I agree. You’ve been on the scene for a long time. Actually, you were first at my place. I saw you pop up in an ad back in 2011. I signed up with you. You looked good, but you were slow to support podcasters when we finally came to your party.

Yes, I see you’ve done a lot of work for musicians.

Nice.

The effort you’ve put in for them is commendable.

I’m not a musician.

Podcasting isn’t music.

We pitch to different audiences and have different expectations from the platform.

It’s not your specialty.

While the other audio platforms grew with podcasters in mind, you scratched your head and left us out.

We uploaded our work to you, and you took our money. You ignored our plight.

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My history with SoundCloud started a year or two after it launched. At the time, phone browsing was new (computers were the standard). SoundCloud was made for the smartphone and promoted through WordPress, Facebook, and word of mouth. It touted itself as a leader in the audio field.

It seemed to be the logical choice.

There was no other that focused its attention on self-made audio publishing.

I recorded my first few podcast tracks for SoundCloud around 2012. I uploaded them and waited to see how they would do. The tracks discussed the content of my book.

I did what was suggested and embedded them into my online blog and waited for the metrics to filter through.

Before I reveal the results, let me say a few words about the app’s pros.

I’ll give SoundCloud credit for those embeds. They look absolutely great in browsers, and they function well. When listeners find it, they have no problems accessing and using it.

I was seriously impressed at how shiny it was! It’s still shiny now!

Why Use SoundCloud?

As mentioned earlier, they were first on the scene.

No other platform offered audio broadcasts and what we later came to call podcasts. Podcasting was uncharted territory.

Margo first gave me the idea for podcasting. She said I had a smooth voice and should record something from my book. Soundcloud was new, but its market was strong at that time. I wanted to take advantage of this new, evolving technology and get ahead of the pack, and it sounded like a great opportunity.

I recorded the first chapter of SEETHINGS, uploaded the audio to SoundCloud, and then set up a blog page with the appropriate embed for testing. I didn’t want to record the whole book, just bits of it. (The editing process is absolutely phenomenal!)

As an audio file, it gleamed nicely in the laptop’s dull light. It was uploaded, begged for its first listener to come by, and waited for hordes of visitors to arrive and rejoice at its marvel.

Hordes? I only heard crickets.

Alas, this audiotrack didn’t attract hordes.

At best, it attracted one or two people (by accident, I think). I let the page stay for nine more months to allow search engines to grab and index all those beautiful little keywords that swirled around in the background.

In the meantime, I blogged about other things while watching and listening from a distance.

Those crickets remained.

If I had people listening but saying nothing, I’d understand, but they weren’t using the SoundCloud platform at all. Downloads were negligible.

Don’t get me wrong; I think what Margo suggested was right. There was a market for author audio, but it just wasn’t with SoundCloud.

SoundCloud’s so-called towering membership should’ve expanded my reach, but it counted for nothing. I got more listeners from my site and the embed. Virtually nothing came from SoundCloud. No one used the app for finding or discovering podcasting content, not my content anyway.

Should Authors Use SoundCloud for Podcasting?

In my experience, I’d go with a resounding no.

In the months (and years) that followed, I got more listeners through Spotify, Apple and my own site. SoundCloud offers functional widgets (see below) via its embeds. Just press play on any of the tracks:

What About Those Original Recordings?

I took down many of those audio files a long time ago, but left this one (from about 12 years ago).

The first recording was done on an old (noise-cancelling) headset microphone designed for Skype calls. The track sounded like it’d been made inside a tin can muffled with a sock. When time permits (and I can find the file), I’ll repost it again, here.

It didn’t sound great but I was only one of a few (and I’ve heard a lot worse since) podcasters back then.

Things are a bit different in the podcasting scene now. We’re armed with new things we didn’t have back then. We’ve got good quality recording gear and software to clean it up.

One thing that sets mine apart from others (content aside) is that I record my podcasts in true stereo. It makes a huge difference due to the topics I talk about!

A lot of time has passed and we now know which audio platforms have real podcasting listeners who are looking for real podcasting content, from a platform that takes podcasters seriously.

We’ve also got more followers through them!

Anyhow, that’s my day of talk about podcasting.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)