Audio Platforms
We are investing in an audio platform to share our content: podcasts, playlists and interviews.
Does anyone have any preferences or suggestions?
We want something that’s shareable, not too expensive. Not sure if one place will do all the jobs?
Bandcamp? Soundcloud? Mixcloud? Spotify?
Any thoughts?
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Bandcamp! But anything other than Spotify please ☺️
I think answers here will tend be v subjective. I will try to explain my subjectivity.
Spotify is a rapacious, profit-slurping, artist-exploiting, monopolistic, satanic abomination of Big Tech. And the app is as bloated as if it hsd eaten all the world’s pies.
But Spotify has the buzz. It’s the only place with everything I want regularly. For me, that outweighs the shittines by several orders of magnitude. (Max respeck to those who eschew the caputalist shittiness, but pls be honest about the tradeoffs with visibility and usability)
My old friend Denis hosts his wonderful weekly “Roots Musings” show on Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/Roots_Musings/
I love Denis, I love his eclectic tastes and encyclopaedia knowledge, but Mixcloud puts me off. If feels lonely and empty, snd since I don’t go there for anything else, I usually miss Denis’s show. It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s coment”as dead as heaven on a saturday night”.
I haven’t been to Soundcloud in about 1000 years. I’d have assumed it was long dead,
i have never been to Bandcamp. Being in my sixties, I am probably several centuries too old to be admitted.
Two thoughts:
1/ Ask a teenager. Seriously. They are usually way way ahead. (I asked friend about a similar issue. She passed me on to her 15yo grandson, who already running multiple channels with edits to die for)
2/ AFAICS, the options you propose are midsIze capitalist bastard vs doomstar capitalist intergalactic megabastard. If you aren’t going full megabastard, why not go all the way in the other direction, to some eco-veggie, organic wholefood Mastodon-style outfit? Nicer to work with, easier on your conscience, and no harder to boost your work that a dying dotcom.
Not Spotify please. They are not nice.
But. I can’t shake it off, because all the family are on a single plan and they can’t imagine using anything else. So it has reach. Which does matter.
What about Patreon? One of my regular podcasts is on there and feels fairly accessible. Having said, that a recent update has made it feel less streamlined and it seems to generate loads of annoying, red notification blobs that are difficult to clear. All I want to know is when a new podcast has dropped, I’m not wanting a new social-media hobby.