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Soundcloud teams up with Hype Machine to service music bloggers better

Mike Butcher

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Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Monday, January 25th, 2010
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[Berlin] In a savvy move, SoundCloud are to partner with music portal The Hype Machine to let labels and artists service music bloggers – a key component of the music scene now – with new and pre-release tracks.

The Hype Machine is going to be able to aggregate the output of blogs, but more importantly the bloggers get official releases without having to be forced to release an MP3 into the wild. In addition labels/artists can track listens and pull analytics on who and how the content is being consumed, as tracks get released. Since labels and bloggers haven’t traditionally got on, this move is potentially a lot more productive for both sides.

Bloggers will be able to embed a range of players from the Berlin-based SoundCloud allowing them to promote the music of their favourite artists using the tracks that were originally uploaded.

Domino are the first label to sign up as well as artists including Massive Attack, Marina and the Diamonds, and Delphic.

The Hype Machine aggregates thousands of handpicked music blogs across the web and is really fun to visit because of is incredible ability to curate music genres. You should try it, it’s great.

Here’s a quick interview I did with Alexander Ljung of SoundCloud at the DLD conference, who explains how it’ll all work:

Alexander Ljung of Souncloud from Mike Butcher on Vimeo.

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  • Matthias

    keep kicking ass, soundcloud.

  • http://www.myhell.org FireBrand

    How does this differ from a billion other sites that let bloggers stream music? Not sure what the value is here? The access to pre-release tracks? Is there such a thing? I mean as soon as it’s on one site it’s twittered to a zillion.

    So what do they bring to the table?

    Wake up and Smell the Coffee…

  • Bad Robot

    It doesn’t sound like an exciting new union; it sounds like an attempt to stop bloggers from hosting and distributing easily downloadable MP3s of new tracks. It won’t work and it’ll damage one of Hype Machine’s key selling points.

  • http://www.bandder.com Andy Leff

    if bands or bloggers want to push out new tracks or pre releases they can try http://www.bandder.com, it will also let them push messages out to other networks

  • http://www.naiveharmonies.com Reid

    This is brilliant. It doesn’t sound as though there’s going to be any change to Hype Machine’s core functions, but SoundCloud (and the labels involved) know that HypeM is exactly where music bloggers (like me) go, so give them the legal material where they’re already going.

    I wish Ljung had directly answered the question about whether the labels will be providing mp3s or just embeds. It sounded like only the latter.

  • Bob Fangool

    Something else to consider – this will show just how many people are actually checking out your blog – if you hit up artists/management saying ‘my blog gets 800,000 unique views a day’ and SOundCloud reports that 2 people checked out a song from your blog, the jig is up…

  • http://www.thebluewalrus.com Tim

    I don’t really see this as important to be honest.

    MP3 blogs exist to share mp3s of the latest music to download. I know you can download some MP3s from Soundcloud, but they are generally stream only which isn’t what mp3s blogs are about.

    Yeah fine, a stream is great to show off a few songs of a second or third album – but for breaking new talent you need to share mp3s so people can listen to your music more than once, in playlists they like/make, and through real speakers or headphones – not tinny laptop speakers which generally give sound worse than even the free ipod buds.

    This union is good for big labels that don’t like sharing and don’t understand much of what blogs do.

  • http://flavors.me/mattbrawn mattbrawn

    its quite a strong move by Soundcloud that’ll get them right into the heart of the music blogs but I think its success will depend pretty heavily on if the tracks are available for download or only available via embeds.

    glad it doesn’t sound like the it’ll have that much of an impact on how hypem works, a definite plus point for me.

  • http://haulix.com Matt

    In a perfect world, record labels could just send out a pre-release album in streaming-only form and all blogs/publications would happily write about the music, giving it all of that great publicity that it deserves.

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Most music journalists of any worth, are used to getting pre-release music in the mail; a complete packaged CD with all the fixin’s. It’s hard for these same journalists to go from “free CD” to streaming only.

    Sound cloud looks great on paper and hey look, they must be great, because they made it onto Tech Crunch. But maybe they would be better off spending some time on ground, actually understanding the nature of a record label.

    **Shameless promotion** There are services out there getting pre-release music promotion RIGHT. Haulix is one of them.

  • http://www.blog.djmastercourse.com DJ

    Very cool, only just started using sound cloud and love it. Looking forward to working through all the new functionality.

  • http://www.itbreaks.com maroufle

    itbreaks.com is a good alternative…

  • http://www.thefunpolicemusic.com The Fun Police

    Hopefully totally indie artists will be able to make theirs available just like the big boys….

    -The Fun Police

  • Melissa MacTavish

    It is Brilliant. Many bloggers are motivated by HyPeM ratings to post straight Mp3′s. this will allow the PR artist to satisfy their ratings and still spread the message of the artist without giving their music away for free.

    There will always be piracy. This is one more tool to allow the artists to pick and choose who gets his music and how they get it.

    Most of the Bloggers already have soundcloud drop boxes. this will also allow the artists to directly link to his fan base and the sounding boards for his artwork.
    When an artist can wrap up his existing fan base and secure them in one place he (Or his PR person -ME-) can then focus on creating more fans.

    Bravo SoundCloud!!!!

  • Melissa MacTavish

    Also, there are other tools in the market for professional musicians. using these tools they can send a stream and a download widget for the 320.
    The fan can hear the song before they download and the artist/label still gets all the analytics.

    The fan still gets the music.

    No one should ever feel entitled to take music they didn’t pay for. We have all had to adapt.
    This will be another amazing tool to allow artists to adapt to the way things are now and still create fan bases.

  • http://www.ukstevieb.com/2010/01/26/steviebs-shared-items-january-26-2010/ StevieB’s Shared Items – January 26, 2010 | LostInCyberspace

    [...] Soundcloud teams up with Hype Machine to service music bloggers betterJanuary 25, 2010 [...]

  • http://jardenberg.se/b/jardenberg-kommenterar-2010-01-26/ jardenberg kommenterar – 2010-01-26 — jardenberg unedited

    [...] Soundcloud teams up with Hype Machine to service music bloggers better [...]

  • Leo

    SoundCloud already allows labels/artists to service tracks to bloggers. The only difference I can see here is that HypeM will from now on be charting SoundCloud uploads as well as straight MP3s – am I right?

    There are 2 queries/issues for me:

    1. Will bloggers who post the SoundCloud upload also get access to the stats (as the uploads will be made to the label/artist’s account)? These stats are valuable to the blogger as well as the label!

    2. If downloading is enabled on the SC upload, other bloggers are likely to download and then post the straight MP3 on their blog, so the MP3 is ‘loose’ anyway. Many bloggers won’t post streams so by disabling downloading, the label/artist will lose coverage (compared with a straight MP3) and therefore reduce the likelihood of making the HypeM charts anyway! Or will SC and straight MP3 uploads be collated in the chart?

  • emily blanchard

    I agree w/ the `brilliance’ of this union-I am sure that there will be many more to come which makes HypeM even more so the go to place for music blog aggregation-staying tuned…

  • http://blog.hypem.com/2010/01/when-two-music-services-love-each-other-very-much/ When two music services love each other very much… • The Hype Machine Blog

    [...] SoundCloud blog and watch a video of SoundCloud’s Alex Ljung talking about our partnership here. CNet has more here as [...]

  • Pieter Leijten

    Great news, but labels should keep in mind that users are interrested in getting music, so they should be kind enough to share a little mp3 here and there just to give the music lovers what they want..

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  • http://fororchestra.com/2010/04/24/christopher-weingarten-keeps-digging/ For Orchestra! » Christopher Weingarten keeps digging

    [...] but I like the technology behind Hype M, but can totally see his point. I think it does do some cool aggregation and new musical tastes and stuff – but as with anything, true aggregation is in [...]

  • http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/2010/04/29/the-hype-machine-anthony-volodkin/ Anthony Volodkin of Hypem | YHP|Your Hidden Potential

    [...] January 2010, The Hype Machine partnered with SoundCloud, allowing labels to provide music bloggers with new and pre-released tracks. The Hype Machine also [...]

  • http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/05/18/now-a-million-on-soundcloud-this-startup-is-scaling-globally/ Now a million on SoundCloud – This startup is scaling globally

    [...] has just announced they have hit a million users. It followers their deal earlier this year with The Hype Machine, but it’s clear this is a startup that is scaling globally now from it’s base in [...]

  • http://juegando.com/uncategorized/soundcloud-hits-a-million-users-clearly-scaling-globally/ SoundCloud Hits A Million Users, Clearly Scaling Globally | Juegando

    [...] has just announced they have hit a million users. It followers their deal earlier this year with The Hype Machine, but it’s clear this is a startup that is scaling globally now from its base in [...]

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