Soundcloud - Kissin' Ass

Two Dudes on Facebook

The exchange above took place on Facebook between two old friends of mine. I have hidden their identities as they are both gentle, talented and supportive souls, they just don't like Soundcloud. However, they have raised an interesting point...

First, Do I Agree?

Yes. I do.

Perhaps not "Kiss Ass" but you certainly need to be part of the community to make the most of what it offers. I referred here to an 'experiment' that I had undertaken. Effectively I recently started responding to comments on my tracks, thanking people for their kind words and engaging in conversations. I have always tried to be supportive where I have listened to others music and enjoyed it. This is what it is to be part of a community.

If you don't give anything to a community, it gives nothing back. For instance, if you move into a new street and don't talk to your neighbours, they wont ask you to the annual knees-up down the pub. However, if you pop round and introduce yourself / watch their cat / invite them to a barbecue, then they will reciprocate. Apply the same rules to Soundcloud (or indeed any other web community) and you have a situation where others on the site will give as much to you as you give to them. Simple math.

However, it might be that you only use Soundcloud as a place to host your music. Your 'community' of fans is elsewhere (say Facebook). So be it. This is like moving into a street and having friends over from uni, work or your old street. That's fine. But you are still 'kissing ass' somewhere.

Is Kissing Ass Bad?


Not in the slightest.

In the music industry your product is worthless. Musicians are two a penny. Musicians making the same type of music as you are two a penny. Musicians in your town making the same type of music as you are two a penny. Why on earth would I value what you produce at all?

If you plan to wait for people to recognise your talent without promoting yourself, you have a loooooong fucking wait ahead of you. So lets dismiss that as an option. You therefore have two other options: (1) Free promotion; and (2) Paid for promotion.... but wait you're a musician.

You only have one option.

The best form of promotion available to you is to make the most of the networking effect of growing internet communities. If you got in early on Myspace, you would be..... The Arctic Monkees. If you got in early on Facebook you would be.... someone I assume (I cant be arsed to look it up). Right now the best place to be spending your time networking and trying to gain traction is a growing, musically focussed, social network: Like Soundcloud.

Therefore if you begrudge the 'Ass Kissing' required to get some followers on the site? Well you don't have the slightest idea what it takes to 'make it' or you simply aren't interested in making it at all.

Soundcloud - a couple of experiments

In the past couple of weeks I've been trying out some new things. Here's some of the learnings I have had:

Responding to Comments: Good or Bad?

Turns out it's a good thing. My man Vinny (Rockshamrover) made the point that "positive responses" to commenters would bring them back to later tracks and create a core group of fans. A group that would drive the behaviour and colour the opinions of newer followers.

I have been following Vinny's suggestion for about a month and there have been three quick positive side effects:

1. On a normal Unpro track 33% of the plays come in the first day (what I call opening night). 25% come the following week and the rest are spread over time. By following Vinny's suggestion this profile has changed. Now the number of plays in the first week normally outstrips the number in opening night. I would guess this is down to the increased volume of activity on the track driven by discussions.
2. The number of plays tracks receive on average is also increased. Previously the play rate of any track was dependent largely on how listeners off of Soundcloud reacted. However, the increase in 'loyalty' from soundcloud listeners means that all tracks get a higher 'base level' of plays across the board. In effect being nice to folk brings them back for more, time and time again.
3. The behaviour of the new followers commenting on tracks has been affected by the 'culture' created by existing followers. As I have gotten to know a group of Soundclouders a language and way of behaving has developed organically in the manner in which we comment which seams to map over onto the new comments received. This hadn't been happening previously.

Vinny's experiment has been a resounding success if I posted a graph of my total plays across all time you would see a great deal of volatility (generated by the release of well received tracks) being replaced by a period of stable and sustained growth. I have Vinny to thank for that.

What happens at Larry's Bar stays at Larry's bar

A while ago I shared an idea with me old mate Literate Wolves about trying to bring together some of the more active and inclusive members of the soundcloud community: a list of whom can be found here.

What I wanted was a way of capturing the broader discussions that were happening either off soundcloud, say on Facebook, or on private messages on a one to one basis.

Soundcloud is specifically targeted at sharing music. It sets itself apart by being focussing on these elements of what it does, rather than spending time on developing means of sharing say, gig dates, photos, blog posts etc. For that you have MySpace. And MySpace failed. However, for those SuperUsers that exist on Soundcloud day in, day out, the format is limiting.

Conversations between us tend to take place in track comments and then break out into private messages. As musicians talk on a limited number of subjects (mostly) you can find yourself repeating the same sentiment time and again. This is the perfect space for a Forum, a many to many conversation. However, Soundcloud's forum system is for every Soundclouder, not the select group of friends I wish to share thoughts with and (and this is important) to identify with.

So, as a starter for ten, I set up a group. Groups at Soundcloud have a comments board, that I felt could be used to capture discussions. It's not perfect. It doesn't thread, oldest comments come first and it doesn't paginate. As Ellie_St points out, this makes reading discussions like mountaineering downwards. At nearly 80 comments the board at Larry's Bar and Grill (the group I set up) is now almost untenable.

However, it has bought people closer together. The denizens of Larry's are now more recognised by each other. We know each others first names, q bit more about each others back grounds. I, for one, always pay more attention when someone from Larry's releases a track or comments on one of mine. It hasn't been a resounding success (yet) but Larry's has certainly been a positive force.

Mixing it up a bit

When I first came to Soundcloud I was effectively sharing a mixture of things I had recorded in the past (old band demos etc) with things I was recording right now. As you know, I like to keep my profile live and ever changing to keep it interesting and this mix of old and new effectively did that. But I rapidly ran out of old stuff.

Now I don't feel a pressure to record songs, I do it because I like doing it, but I did want to keep communicating through Soundcloud. Another thing I wanted to achieve was to bring more of my personality to the page. After all, music doesn't tell the whole story and Soundcloud limited the space I had for additional info to a text box on the side of my profile page.

So I decided to mix up my music with:

1. Songs I have recorded
2. Collaborations with other Soundclouders
3. Voice updates recorded on the Soundcloud app on my iPhone
4. Live music and ideas also recorded on the app on my iPhone

So far that seams to be working as a way to bring more interest to my profile page.... I think.

Anyway, enough of this. See you soon.

Sent while I was out and about and whatnot

Who to Follow on Soundcloud

The Best of The Best can be found down at Larry's Bar and Grill. They are (in no particular order):

Sam Franklin

Luke McLaughlin

The Odd Job

Niallage

The Sandman's Orchestra

Pattern Break

Tanaki Alison

Rockshamrover

Bill Carr

| Scaramanga |

Rain_and_Sun

Literate Wolves

Link Jacker

Ellie-St

MetalRenard

Paul Byrne

Ignatius Zoo

BeDre

Laura-Jane

Vi Vi

Dan Pedridge

Broken Listener

Collecting Pool

Recording The Perfect Cover

I have been driving backward and forward to my offices this week trying to think of a cover to record. I don’t know why I want to record a cover. Perhaps it’s because writing songs at a rate of two a week is starting to create a sort of ‘songwriters fatigue’. Recording a cover means I won’t have the hard work of coming up with the ideas, only the arrangement. Whatever the reason, it’s something I just have to do right now.

To begin with the process of finding my perfect cover wasn’t particularly scientific; I put my iPod on all tracks shuffle and skipped and skipped and skipped. Hundreds of songs later I was still none the wiser, having had nothing jump out at me. So I decided that what was required was perhaps just
a little bit of science.

What A Cover Can Achieve

A cover can do a number of things:

1. It can introduce a whole new market to a song they would never have heard -Think Johnny Cash singing ‘Hurt’, or Mike Patton singing “Easy Like Sunday Morning”.
2. It can take a top ten hit and make it a number one -  Think Sinead O’Connor singing “Nothing Compares 2 U”
3. It can provide the basis of a whole new track - Think “I’ll be Missing You” by Puff Daddy
4. It can be a great way to get noticed - Anything by Pomplamoose (I chose this by Pomplamoose)

The Right Cover for Me

Knowing this, I go armed into a world of songs looking for the one that best fits me. First of all I need to work out what I sound like and what song might fit that sound well. What does The Always Unprofessional Sound Like? I asked a friend. He said, “You sound pissed most of the time. Above 100bpm you sound stupid. I’m not sure you can really play any musical instruments. I think, that you think, that you’re Tom Waits.” Great... what would Tom Waits do? I checked. He’d record a Ramones number. Makes sense.

So knowing I need a song that might sound good slow and drunk-i-fied, I now need to know what I can achieve with my limited musical capabilities and studio set up. I’ll fly through the limitations: (a) I can’t sing, so high and harmonies are right out, (2) I can only play guitar, bass and piano (c) I record everything on pretty low-fi kit so big production is also out.

Next up what interests me? If it doesn’t make me smile, you’ll hear it straight away in the track. I need to enjoy the processes as much as I want others to enjoy the track. Therefore, I need to call on songs I actually enjoy. Back to the iPod....

And here’s the final thing. Someone will ask me why I recorded my cover. What’s the story? What story can I tell about the song I chose?

My Choice

So here’s that story. I have a beautiful two year old daughter. Like all two year olds some nights she wakes up crying and wont go back to sleep. Since she was born I have calmed her and rocked her back to sleep singing “Count Your Blessings” by Irvin Berlin. I’ve never tried to record it so now’s my
chance.

The best thing is, I can lay the song down really simply with a processor and keys. Also it will sound pretty good with my rough and ready voice (and it’s no disco number, so I won’t “sound silly”). Any way, since writing everything above, I had a crack at a recording.

Here’s the results: Count Your Blessings

I really enjoyed the process and, importantly, I liked the end product. Give it a go yourself. Make a cover. See what you come up with.

Soundcloud Secrets - What's Next??

I'm sat in a doctors waiting room, waiting for a blood test to check my cholesterol levels. I have to do this because I'm getting older and a mixture of a growing family and a successful business (both of which I am thankful for) is putting some stress and strain on my heart.

Grandad died of a heart attack very young don't you know...

Anyway, Soundcloud is going through a very similar stage in it's own development. It's not a kid anymore and, as it grows in popularity and functionality some of the symptoms of stress are starting to show.

Let's put aside system bugs (most of which Soundcloud has been free of - no fail whale here) and focus on the social ecology around the site itself. First up: New folk.

Back in the 90's I used to go to a local venue (the arts centre) that was largely ignored by all but the most bohemian interesting folk. I'm pretty certain my arrival (along with a small band of kids from broken homes that I called my friends) was the beginning of the end for that place. We had about a year of mixing with the 'cool people' before other local teens crossed that threshold into what we will call the "pre-legal drinking age" (that age when parents realise that they are either going to deliver their offspring to a safe drinking venue, or they will sneak out and sniff glue in the park). One day the Arts Centre was full of creeps in neatly presses Levellers T's. It was the end.

The same thing is currently happening to Soundcloud. The original group of enthusiasts is being eclipsed by the mob and the famous faces. Don't get me wrong, the transition is a necessity for an online service and one that, handled well by both he incumbents and the site itself can lead to wonderful things (see Twitter and Facebook). Managed badly it can all go the same way as the Arts Centre (Myspace). The current super-users need to adapt to these new faces without losing their own identity. At the same time the site needs to ensure it's values aren't lost in trying to appease the needs of the diverse mass Market.

Another new trend: Spam.

Yep. I get offered wives through Soundcloud. I really do have enough wife. Mines currently twice her normal size and hormone level. There are also people building offsite follow bots and follow pyramids. It happened on twitter, it'll happen here.

Again this need not be a concern. Twitter is a terrible place to sell services and I'm pretty certain that Soundcloud will be even worse. The investment of time and capital to Market services through Soundcloud will prove prohibitive. We'll have a glut of crap through Christmas and then by this time next year the spammers will start to give up leaving accounts with thousands of dormant followers languishing on the cloud.

Another new trend: The Famous.

These will be split into two categories. The real celebs that put stuff on soundcloud as a means of promotion (for both Soundcloud and the celebs at first) and people that find fame on soundcloud. At some point wired will do an article on this group. They will be both loved and loathed by their fellow Soundclouders I suppose.

Anyway I'm off to get stabbed... See you later.



Sent while I was out and about and whatnot

Get More Followers on Soundcloud

Hi there.

I thought I’d take a moment to share some of my experience of Soundcloud and to share some of the things I’ve learned about putting my music up online. 

First of all, I should explain this. My name is Jof, but I share music online under the name The Always Unprofessional. You can find me on Soundcloud. 

Over the past six months I have written, recorded and released about 70 tracks. That’s about two and a half songs a week. That’s quite a lot of songs. That means I have quite a lot of data to play with.

Now I should give you a quick health warning. The data I’m working with was not generated scientifically. I’ve been banging away on my laptop, strumming away on my geetar and releasing songs all higgledy piggledy on random days, at random times, and I have been promoting them in random ways. So don’t take anything that follows as gospel. 

To test some theories I have about Soundcloud I pulled together a load of data. Soundcloud has a lovely stats page and, as I pay for my account there, I have lots of nice number to look at. I also looked at other places I have my music to see how many people interacted with my songs. 

So lets dig into the facts:

First up: does the number of plays a song has mean that people like it? erm..... no. 

Check this out: 

These are four songs I recorded around the same time. Look at the song called ‘Josephene’. It’s had three times the number of plays the others have but the same amount of comments, likes and downloads. 

Josephene had a storming opening night (the night I released it). 800 people played it that night. But when Soundcloud records a play it could be 10 seconds or the whole song. All the number of plays tells me is that 1,245 people checked the song out. 

The number of comments is also mis-leading. Sometimes a conversation starts on a track creating a load of comments, and of course it could also be 27 people saying “This song sucks ass man! Take it the fuck down”. 

Nope all we can really say is that 20 folk liked it enough to download it. That’s twenty people who want to listen to it again and again. Twenty true Jospehene lovers. What nice people. I should send them all a hamper. 

Okay. So why did Josephene get so many plays? Lets talk about Opening Nights.

Opening Nights are all important to the success of failure of a song. Jospehene was uploaded on a Monday. It got a whopping 65% of all the plays it’s ever had right there and then. 

I put it on Reddit and Reddit went mad for it.  It got 46 Upvotes and 55 comments on Reddit. For me, that’s a lot. All those plays on day one were probably those Redditors. God bless them I should buy them a Hamper. 

Maybe it was because opening night was Monday night? A night when Redditors and the denizens of Soundcloud are bored shitless and more open to sad, distorted, ballads? I checked the data:

In number terms opening nights matter a lot. Monday is the best day by far. On average tracks I have released on a Monday have had 415 plays on opening night. Compare this with a Friday when the average is 102. That’s a big difference.

This trend translates to the days people listen online in general. If you compensate for the effect of Opening Nights Monday is still the busiest day of the week. It seams Mondays are so shit people stop working and listen to music for a bit.

So why does opening night matter so much? 

Weeeeelll, despite what I said about plays not being the be all and end all, more plays do mean more opportunities to find the people that will like a song. Check this out...

I’ve chosen ‘One Snowy Night’ as an example here. It’s not a great track, but it does beautifully illustrate my point: 

On average my tracks receive one third of their plays on the opening night. That’s all the people who see it crop up on various social networks or on the Soundcloud stream and giving it a play. 

The following week that track will get a further 25% of its plays. This represents those people who don’t live and breath internet music spotting the new song later and giving it a play. It also represents those people who have seen their friends commenting on the track or have had it recommended popping in for a listen. 

The other 42% of plays come over the the long tail. This represents people finding the track in soundcloud groups, by its tags or coming back for another listen coz they liked the song. 

Like Movies, if the opening night sucks then my little song is going to bomb.  

How do I pump opening night?

Its all about going where the eyes are and, more importantly, where the right eyes are. 

I put widgets from soundcloud on a bunch of sites which range from the great (Reddit and Facebook) to the shit (Digg and Twitter).

Bare in mind I have large Facebook and Twitter ‘Followings‘ - in fact over 3,000 people follow me on Twitter. However, they are 3,000 people who don’t care a jot for unsigned music, so telling them about a new song is almost pointless. 

Facebook is populated by my friends and, while they might not like my music, they do like me, so they tend to be supportive. 

Reddit has some awesome ‘Sub-Reddits‘ for musicians and so, when I post there I know I’m talking to tens of thousands of like minded soles. Digg is the opposite, as yet I haven’t found a spot on Digg where posting my songs gets any response at all.  

I know there are others... but I ain’t got round to them yet. 

Either way, on opening night, I fly paper the internet with my new song, stick it on all the relevant groups and then sit back to see what happens. If people comment or ask questions, I respond. I try to be open, grateful and appreciative of what they say. After all I want them to come back!

Talking of giving the audience what they want...

I record a mixture of up-beat lo-fi and downbeat ballads. Nothing unusual there. The downbeat stuff is probably a little more unique, but not much. 

It is easy to be swayed by a big reaction to one song or another into thinking I should record more songs like that. For instance, a while ago I released a track called “Clatter and Bash” that did rather well, so for the next couple of weeks I was taken by the idea that I should do more songs in the same style.

Then as if to prove me wrong, “Lullaby” a track that is possibly the antithesis of Clatter and Bash also got a storming response. 

If I classify my top twenty songs into “Up” and “Down” the results look like this...

Lullaby	Down
Josephene	Down
Clatter and Bash	Up
One Last Song Marie	Down
Heroins	down
Stay Right There	up
It's a Long Walk Home From Here	Down
Yesterday Again, Almost	Up
Up	Up
Blues For Lee	Down
Tonight Tonight	Up
That Feel	up
Come Round Mine	Up
Blackground	Down
I'm Falling Asleep	Down
Tarmac Fades	Down
You're Beautiful	Up
Charlie and That	Up
My Prayers Don't Work	Down
Lock Up Tight	Up

Ten Downers, Ten Uppers and no clear preference. The thing is, a good song is a good song up, down, left, right....doesn’t matter. 

What is for certain is that soundcloud is skewed away from the old style ‘live band’ set up towards those that produce and remix. Just look at the popular tags...

This means the majority of those floating around the cloud will be skewed away from my music. 

That said there is more than enough people listening to the tags that I fit under to double / treble... hell to Centuple the number of listens I get. 

On that note...

Given the clear effect of Opening Night and the number of people who listen to my music from other websites, does the number of actual followers I have on Soundcloud matter. 

Turns out the answer is yes. I gain about 3 or followers a day on average. Many of these are actually ‘Follow-me-backs”. These are people that follow me in the vein hope that I will, for some reason, start listening to their music.... NO HAMPER FOR YOU FOLLOW ME BACKS. 

That said, the other followers are people that actively play my music, like it, comment on it and download it. I like to think of them as *whisper it*..... fans.

Hamper for you fans. 

They provide a foundation of activity that builds slowly, but exponentially over time. Look at my total plays. 

Its hard to see the trend, but back in October I was getting an average of 20 plays a day. Now that average has risen to nearly 100. Thats five times the plays in six months. If that continued (which I’m not sure it will, I’ll explain why in a moment) I would be looking at 500 plays a day by September. 

Here’s a conclusion for you...

Promoting music online directly mirrors all the standard tasks involved in marketing a product:

1. You need to know who your audience is and what they want
2. You need to know where they are and how to get your message across to them
3. You need to know what they are willing to give in exchange for what you are looking to ‘Sell Them’

I hope my audience want my songs. I know they are out there on Reddit, Soundcloud and to a lesser extent Facebook. I’m asking them to give roughly ten minutes of their time, each week, to listening to one of my songs. 

Ten Minutes is a lot of time online. 

I know that I will quickly exhaust the group of people on the sites I post my songs that will want to listen. All marketing campaigns eventually show what I guess they call an ‘S-Curve’. Put simply, after a while you have won all the hearts and minds you can in one place and you have to move on. It’s what they call ‘Maximum Penetration’. 

However, until then I’ll enjoy every minute of the journey. By the way. If you have listened to all of this.... Free Hamper for you.  

Thanks for your time and KEEP WATCHING THE SKIS  

The Always Unprofessional

I thought it was about time to put some thought into what "The Always Unprofessional" is becoming.

Almost a year ago now I played a (frankly tragic) concert at a local festival. I hadn't played on stage in about two years, wasn't writing music and had no real inclination to be a musician anymore. Indeed by rights that concert should have been the nail in the coffin of 15 years of performing.

Three things happened to change that. The first was that I discovered how easy it was to scratch up songs with my MacBook and a copy of GarageBand. The second was that I found the music sharing site "Soundcloud". The third was I found a supportive community of musicians in "We are the Music Makers" at Reddit.

Tentatively I recorded and released a few songs that sort of followed on from what had been "Turner" our local 90's LoFi indie band. Those songs got a little support and some good feedback. Then one night (after much frustration trying to nail a vocal) I recorded a down beat, sentimental ballad called "One Last Song Marie". The awesome response to a song that I felt would be largely ignored changed my view on what I wanted to do online.

Since then I have skewed my songs more and more into the down tempo, gritty and sentimental style that is becoming The Always Unprofessional. At the same time a whole 'persona' is building itself around the songs which isn't necessarily my own. More like an act or a character, which is fine. After all this is a performance medium and online communities lend themselves to playing out a role.

At the same time I have turned my Soundcloud account into a sort of scientific project. I have been learning what drives plays, comments, likes and downloads and trying to define (if not adhere to) a from of best practice.

Most of all I enjoy what I'm doing. Writing songs has not been a hobby for me for many, many years. It provides a fantastic outlet for stress and introduces me to some lovely crazy people.

Anyway, back to work.

Sent while I was out and about and whatnot

Axeing followers, Twitter vs Soundcloud

A long while ago I built up quite a following on Twitter. I did this by 'Following back' and by engineering various pyramid style follow schemes. To retain followers I automated various humorous observations to repeat once in a while at all hours of the day.

It was all a bit Heath Robinson, but I wanted to evaluate the individuals ability to use Twitter to promote services. Once I felt I had traction (at about 10,000 followers) I started to test sales messages against other channels.Needless to say (and there are far more complete studies available online) the results were pathetic.

That's not the point of this little post.

When I was done with testing twitter, I dumped all but 100 odd souls I wanted to follow. The result was that about 7,000 people stopped following me overnight.

This weekend (for other reasons) I did roughly the same thing on soundcloud. Currently I have about 2,500 followers and I was following 1,900 people. On Sunday I dropped this number to nearer 300. The result? No change in the number of followers at all.

Odd that. Soundclouders, it seams, are wayyyyy more sticky.

Anyway just a thought for the day.

Sent while I was out and about and whatnot