SoundCloud

What is it? 

            SoundCloud is a European online audio distribution platform and music sharing founded by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss in October 2008 (Mahroum, 2016). It was founded in Stockholm, Sweden in 2007 but is currently based in Berlin, Germany (Mahroum, 2016). It is a user-generated platform as it enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. It is available on any mobile device and desktop. 

Features

            SoundCloud depicts audio tracks graphically as waveforms and allows users to post “timed comments” on specific parts of any track. These comments are displayed while the associated audio segment is played. Also, users can click the ‘heart’ button to any song they like which will then be saved to the ‘like’ playlist. Users can ‘repost’ tracks, ‘share’ them onto another platform like Twitter and Facebook, and ‘follow’ other accounts. SoundCloud’s ability to help users uncover new music is done through the addition of a “related tracks” feature. After you “hearted” a certain track, the platform will give you other track options through the “Related Tracks” feature. This option kicks off a music discovery journey that sees SoundCloud’s algorithm generating a stream of other songs you might also like (Perez, 2015).

Subscription Services

            The platform offers both free and paid membership. SoundCloud Go+ allows access to over 150 million songs, offline playback, no ads, no previews, licensed music library, and premium music tracks for $10 per month (Mahroum, 2016). SoundCloud Go only offers ad-free and offline playback for $5 a month and SoundCloud Pro allows users to upload up to six hours of audio and adds additional features such as enhanced analytics, and the ability to disable comments on tracks (Mahroum, 2016). Finally, SoundCloud Pulse is for the content creators. It allows them to check their statistics and reply to comments. This application was created to separate the users from the content creators in order to increase the quality of experience for both.

Cultural Impact

            What is interesting about SoundCloud is that it offers a medium for artists without recording labels or distributors to be heard. It is a great opportunity for undiscovered gems who are trying to generate a fanbase around their material. It offers an alternative path to pursue for a career in music that is different from the existing music industry as people can produce music without any studio equipment, which is usually quite costly. SoundCloud is thus both a social media platform and a streaming service.  

Dijck and Duguay on the Bias of Automation

            For listeners, SoundCloud is a valuable tool for discovery; their “suggested tracks” feature, uses machine learning to analyse listening habits and suggests new music from artists (Kardos, 2017). While it looks like platforms’ functions promote a neutral technological infrastructure where all content is carried indiscriminately, Dijck (2013) denounces this misconception with the case of Twitter. However, this applies to other platforms as well. The tool for discovery named “suggested tracks” on SoundCloud is similar to “Facebook Trending Topics” and “Twitter Moments”, which also brings up the relevance of Duguay’s (2018) essay on the logic of automation. These platforms’ features are organized and sustained by the logic of automation based off the elements of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication. Thus, Duguay reinforces’ Dijck’s discourse by agreeing on the bias of selection and display of news information. SoundCloud’s “suggested tracks” work in a similar way as algorithmic patterns give priority to some tracks over others. Plus, there is not an option to turn off the feature. It acts as a mandatory visibility that automatically attracts the users towards it. 

Social Bots on SoundCloud: A Research 

            Directly intertwined with the way algorithms work lies automated communication on social media, which has recently seen an increase attention. Social bots, social media accounts controlled by algorithms that mimic human behaviour, have been found to attempt to influence users in several contexts (Ross, Brachten, Stieglitz, Wikstrom & Moon, 2018). As social media platforms increasingly gain influence as tastemakers in the music economy, the economic incentives also increase to try to influence the communication dynamics on these platforms in one direction or another (Ross et al, 2018). In a research, Ross and other researchers (2018) use social media analytics to analyse the behaviour of SoundCloud users. By defining a metric that captures comment uniqueness in users as a measure of behavioural complexity, they were able to find the prevalence of bots. The variable of comment uniqueness is relevant as the repetition of comments, among other elements, are bot-like behaviour. Adding to that, a low number of followers and lack of original content can also be a sign of a bot account. Thus, Ross and his team assumed that many bots follow simplistic rules such as choosing one out of a number of possible predefined comments (e.g. ‘nice’, ‘great song’, ‘cool’). This type of activity would result in a very low comment uniqueness.  Involving other variables, the goal was to find active, but highly repetitive comments users who would mainly repost tracks uploaded by others. Findings were that a considerable amount of activity seemed to be generated by bots or semi-automated accounts on SoundCloud (Ross et al, 2018). This research is relevant as it adds on to the article on the threat of fake accounts by Confessore, Dance, Harris, and Hansen(2018) and offers a specific study for the case of SoundCloud. 

Social Media Fraud and Popularity 

            Attempting to influence the discussion, thus the popularity of tracks through published comments in order to gain visibility is quite plausible. The article The Follower Factory (2018) published in The New York Times exposes social media fraud by the company Devumi, who is selling Twitter followers to anyone who wants to appear more popular online. Indeed, the manipulation of activity records arguably impacts platform dynamics, thereby affecting the success of tracks. This not only has implications regarding the user experience of SoundCloud, but also cultural consequences for the platform, its users, and artists. Whether the desired outcome of popularity was achieved is however difficult to establish. Nonetheless, it raises the question if the participation of automated accounts on SoundCloud as well as on other social media platforms like Twitter might be overlooked.

            Technologies such as SoundCloud are enabling music producers and consumers a whole range of different ways in which they can engage, give/get feedback, promote, share, acquire, tag and make meaning of music (Chamberlain, McGrath, and Benford, 2015). SoundCloud is a means to create relationships between listeners and content producers. It is encouraging listener engagement and for the musicians it is an easy way to share their musical creations with millions of potential listeners. The platform has a place to develop new music styles, push musical and sonic aesthetics, and build online communities. However, the logic of automation in “related tracks” is directly linked with the popularity of tracks and thus uses bias in the process selection. The increasing prevalence of automated accounts might make SoundCloud and specific tracks look more popular, but really it is threatening participatory engagement from real users. 

References

Chamberlain, A., McGrath, S., & Benford, S. (2015). Understanding social media and sound:     music, meaning and membership, the case of SoundCloud. London: University of Nottingham.

Confessore, N., Dance, G. J. X., Harris, R., & Hansen, M. (2018). The Follower Factory. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-   bots.html.

Duguay, S. (2018). Social media’s breaking news: The logic of automation in Facebook Trending Topics and Twitter Moments. Media International Australia, 166(1), 20–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X17737407

Leah, Kardos. (2017). SoundCloud is still alive – and that’s bad news for musicians. Retrieved February 22, 2020, from

https://qz.com/1054288/soundcloud-is-still-alive-and-thats-bad-news-for-musicians/.

Mahroum, S. (2016). SoundCloud in Berlin, Sharing the Vibe. In Black Swan Start-ups (pp. 59-72). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Ross, B., Brachten, F., Stieglitz, S., Wikstrom, P., & Moon, B. (2018) Social bots in a commercial context–A case study on SoundCloud. Association for Information Systems. 

Sarah, Perez. (2015) In Wake of Apple Music, SoundCloud Update Focuses On Music Discovery, Better User Experience. Retrieved February 22, 2020, from https://techcrunch.com/2015/07/02/in-wake-of-apple-music-soundcloud-update-focuses-on-music-discovery-better-user-experience/.

Van Dijck, J. (2013). Twitter and the Paradox of Following and Trending. In The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (pp. 68–88). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.