SoundCloud For Podcasting? What about Apple or Spotify?

I’ve had a wonderful time recording audio excerpts of my novel SEETHINGS and placing them on the Internet (Spotify) for your ears to enjoy.

It’s been a long time since I first added audio to the Internet. In the beginning, I messed around with Soundcloud – many years ago. A friend put me onto it (we didn’t call what I was doing podcasting back then). It was a time when cell phones became Smartphones and Apps were new. I purchased a new mike, scratched out some ideas on paper and then recorded them into a track. I didn’t know what I was doing, but this was to be my new journey into recording podcasts.

From that point, it was head down, write new content to talk about and then post it. I (sat in the dark with a red light behind me -Ha ha 🙂 ) popped on some headphones, recorded some stuff, and sent it out to the world. I trialled it on Soundcloud, posted a file or two to see how the service worked – the uploading process, searching for myself and analysing how the tracks display in their online library.

Tags accompany Soundcloud uploads. It’s how podcasters file their tracks into places where future listeners can find them. That seemed like a nice and logical way to get discovered. (There wasn’t a specific podcast genre available, just tags.)

I particularly liked how their code could be easily embedded in blogs (see above) and how it looked afterwards. Combining tracks formed a Playlist and it too had its own easy-to-add code. Anyone could do it. I did it – and it worked nicely. It still does.

But…

I noticed a couple of unusual things about SoundCloud as a podcast host. It was pitched more at musicians. And the free service didn’t offer much airtime. I’d have to go over the paywall and sign up for more to continue – and I wasn’t convinced enough to commit. So I played it cool, filled the free version with my content, and stood back to see what would happen.

I saw no favourable results.

I continued to monitor Soundcloud while researching other ways to podcast – perhaps using my own site as a broadcast point. My early test tracks on Soundcloud sounded fine, but remained static and ignored.

iTunes was forging new ground in the podcast world by offering creators like me a dedicated podcasting section. Unlike platforms like Soundcloud, iTunes didn’t actually store the tracks. They picked up the feed from other sources (like SoundCloud), indexed it, and then relayed it.

There was nothing to stop a podcaster from launching a podcast from their own site, sending their feed out, and having iTunes index it (and clones to also copy and relay it) for their catalogue. I decided I’d go it alone, launch my podcast from michaelformanwriting.com, and have the site carry it. (Eventually, I went with Spotify – more about that in later posts)

Did the Soundcloud podcast experiment pay off? Sure. It convinced me that Soundcloud wasn’t for me.

Self-hosting was a good option, and there was proof: while my S/Cloud stats remained static for years, the self-hosted podcast grew. (I frequently had more listeners on single self-hosted tracks per day than I did on all the tracks I had parked on Soundcloud.)

Spotify is now my Podcast’s home. I adjusted the podcast’s content, gained a better idea of what best suits my work, and now have thousands of listeners tuning in.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll upload more content to Spotify. Why not listen now?

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

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