Most importantly, those beats weren’t videos, they were just beats with still images as the “video.” Artists can and should take advantage of YouTube’s huge audience and very user-friendly platform to share music with the everyday fan. Remember when Joey Bada$$ said he found the beat to “Christ Conscious” by typing “Joey Bada$$ type beat” into YouTube? And also when A$AP Rocky did the same to find the beat for “Fine Whine”? Yeah – that actually happened. Many artists and fans may think that YouTube is only good for high-quality music videos, but this is simply not the case anymore, and it hasn’t been for a while.
Bandcamp Pro allows you to get some premium features like a custom domain, so you can have “” lead to your Bandcamp page where people can buy music and merch and connect with your social media, making Bandcamp an awesome one-stop shop for artists and fans alike.īest for: reaching more listeners making money off your music YouTube Another good reason to use Bandcamp is because you can use it as your artist website. They’re also always bettering themselves, including improving on their rising blog, which I might add occasionally promotes artists through editorial pieces. If you’re looking to reach directly to your fans, or conversely if you’re looking to directly support an artist as a fan, Bandcamp is a great alternative to Soundcloud. This is a huge deal in an industry where artists can easily get cut out of their own earnings thanks to all the middlemen and women in between the artist and their fans. Bandcamp takes a small cut of that, but the majority of that $5 goes straight to the artist (in my experience, someone paying $25 for an album yields just over $20 for the artist). Say you purchase your favorite indie artist’s new album for $5. What’s so great about Bandcamp is the monetization aspect. In addition, artists can sell merchandise and physical copies of their album directly through Bandcamp. Artists can choose what they charge for their music, even being able to give away music for free. The service really is for musicians and cultivating an intimate fanbase. Sites Like SoundCloud – The Best Alternatives Bandcampīandcamp has been around for a while and for good reason. With everything, there are pros and cons, so it is up to you to determine which one you put your weight behind.įor those weary of long descriptions, I threw together a quick and dirty comparison chart that you can check out at the bottom of this post.
Some are better than others some are more established than others. People want to know – mainly those who upload their own musical creations – where can they turn to when the frustration against Soundcloud becomes insurmountable? What if Soundcloud caves, not financially, but in the sense that it loses its user base?Īnd with the news that SoundCloud may go bankrupt, it’s not more pressing that indie artists everywhere look elsewhere for a service to host their music.īelow you’ll find a complete list of websites like Soundcloud that you can use – both as a fan and as an artist – to post, listen and share music with the world.
It seems there’s never a period of a few months in which Soundcloud turns its users against it, whether that’s really the malice of the company “selling out” intentionally or not, or whether it’s the greedy content creators getting upset when Soundcloud stops handing out their services on a silver platter.
The site also began serving ads in 2014, and charging users to upgrade in order to avoid them (among other additional features), further frustrating users.
Over the summer, Soundcloud users wagged their fists at the streaming service for removing the community-centric “groups” feature. For the past several years, Soundcloud has faced criticism by those who upload music and even by those who simply listen.