I have been ranting about how shitty SoundCloud lately on various platforms, and seeking alternatives. The recent hashtag mess was just the trigger of ditching this poorly made platform. Let me tell you about how did I ended so much hate toward to SoundCloud, and why I have settled in Newgrounds.
Like Rome, my hate towards SoundCloud wasn’t built within a single day, and it was about accumulation of many big and small problems to the platform.
Everything has started since I have uploaded the track In My Imagination, which I got immediate likes and a comment right after uploading the track. I was so excited to see what happened; after opened the page, I see some kind of “label” account telling me that they were interested in my track and wanted me to send them a demo. I was skeptical because how would my track even be that great? Thus, I have looked into their account, and did a research on Reddit, and unsurprisingly, it was a scam. Since then, no matter how I upload my track, a bunch of bot rushing into my comment section and making canned response, without leaving a single play. I was disheartened because these bots lower the overall engagement, and without doing anything meaningful.
The bots were only getting worse, since the time I have upload The Mission, I decided to set my license to CC instead of all right reserved, and enabled a download button. Everything went smoothly, until one day, I did a search my name on YouTube out of curious, and I got…
What the duck dude? There are a bunch of bots ripping off my track for their own profit, with hideous thumbnails! I am fine for people if they want to use my tracks on their videos or games, as long as they have leave a credit, but ripping off my track to make money on their YouTube Channel is the cheapest thing I could imagine. On the bright side, this motivates me to listen music to the official channel rather than some random bot channels so that support the original artists, unless I am out of luck to find the original artist in any ways.
The problem above are technically still a non issue because it is how license works and spambots are not new, but here is where everything has gone downhill. Recently, spam issue has only worsen, and it is quite common to get 2 – 3 bots per song right after upload; they have done a lot of inconvenience and annoyance, but SoundCloud don’t care at all; instead, for some bizarre reason, they decided to shadow ban my account, thinking I am a “spam”, blocking any comments I made, not even a simple “Thank You!” response. I have submitted a support ticket since January, and stating this non-sense shadow ban; it have been three months, and the SoundCloud support respond nothing.
Still, I can still tolerate these mess because I can encourage others to leave a comment in Mastodon or here, trying to lower the effect of the shadow ban, and promote my other platforms, which there is always a way for opportunities; however, they have finally put their final nail to their coffin, by disabling sort by latest on their hashtag search. NightRadio used to create monthly playlist for all those cool SunVox tracks, but because of the geoblocking issue and his busyness, he have stopped uploading the playlist. To keep the spirit of the monthly playlist, I decided to make my own version, SunVox Music Spotlight, hopefully to let smaller SunVox artist a bit of attentions. Nevertheless, now I can’t because of that hashtag update. I could use the generic keyword search, but that is far less accurate and it has a limited time option. It completely breaks the sense of community, losing the best way to connect with other SunVox artists on the platform. I fed up all their shitty move, and I decided to announce:
Logickin – the SoundCloud channel is officially down, you will never see any new upload there, nor any playlist:
At the time, I will slowly replace my embed from other hosts, like Audius or Newgrounds. “Wait… did you say… Newgounds?” Yes! You are not reading that wrong, as now I have a Newgounds Account, and I will continue to upload music there! I have been here for a month, and I really like the platform because it has the awesome feeling of the older internet, where people can talk freely without any issue; seeing those aggressive comments, the 5 stars rating, along with all those old, classic flash games, this platform gives me a lot of nostalgia.
See you guys on Newgrounds!!! Not only I will upload all my tracks here, but also I will remaster or even re-work my old tracks which are not up to my current standard!
Here we go! My final blast of rant about $pambotCloud, and the introduction of my Newgrounds Account!
Soar Beyond Your Imagination, and see you next time!
Update: funny enough, I have upload some of the tracks within a week, but I got more listen than I have posted on $oundcloud since 2022. I had definitely chosen the wrong platform initially, and I should had chosen Newgounds in the first place.
Update 2: I just find SoundCloud have recently restored the sort by latest for the hash tag, but it is too late because I have already made a switch; while they often made horrible decisions, I am not going to return the platform, but I will try to contact SunVox users in there to see if they are interested in uploading some cool tracks for our YouTube channel, hopefully to reach more audience because connection is another big issue in SoundClouds which it is impossible to find audience.
I have changed my mind, I decided to start making the playlist again because it was intended to help smaller SunVox artist to gain attention, no more new upload of my music though.
Hey Logickin… WaxingAndWaning here (eLawnMust on KVR) yeah I started getting hounded on soundclud (misp on purpose) because I was not ‘premium/pro’ so I told them to close my account & delete everything but they deleted NOTHING!… It’s all there I just can’t access it anymore that was 1.5 years ago…
That’s OK I don’t put anything ‘real good’ on the net just jingles/concepts as it’s too easy for ANYTHING to be stolen & mostly a person would not know of it happening… Listening right now to some of your stuff it’s ‘too good’ to be on the net, to avoid stealing just make short jingles or put vocal hits in with profanity, big ‘stop gaps’, etc… great work BTW nice site here…
It sounds a bit ridiculous that soundcloud bans you for “MISP on purpose” while you only post stuff about old music tracker software, but at the same time, they whitelist all those invasive bots. This is the reason why I don’t use the platform anymore except for making monthly playlists and I have moved everything to Newgounds. It just gives me an impression that they encourage those bot accounts for the destructions, while they ban actual users who just want to share their music or make connections to other artists. Will you consider to have your own website? Some web server can be as cheap as $6 per month, and I think your content is good to have a blog, so you can tell a bit of stories about those tracker softwares, along with your music.
Edit: Yeah, I am on the way of rebranding, so this is the reason why my name is now Accipiter Nova instead of Logickin.