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Who Are You Getting Embed With? SoundCloud vs. Bandcamp...

Thursday, September 22, 2011
by  paul

In the golden years of MySpace, if you didn't have a MySpace page, you simply didn't exist as an artist. Things have changed, but not the final goal: you still need to effectively position your music so that listeners can find you easily, listen further, and hopefully buy your stuff.   

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This guest post is by Veronica Picciafuoco .

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The difference is that now, there are tons of online windows for you to display your work. Yet most of them are not really optimized for music (YouTube, Facebook), difficult and costly to customize, or don’t give you enough control over the material (iTunes, streaming services, etc.)  Maybe the real action should start with the audio embed, with companies designed specifically around music.  

And who’s winning that race?  We took a look at two solid players in this field, SoundCloud and Bandcamp.  And, a rising underdog, Official.fm, to see how they all performed against each other. 

Product

All three services allow you to register for free and host your music. A song, or even an entire album can be streamed for free on any webpage via an embeddable player. And here’s the first level of competition: how cool the player looks.

SoundCloud’s 'soundwave' has been extremely successful, partly because any listener with a SoundCloud account can comment on specific passages within the track.

(Modeselektor fear. Busdriver, "Pretentious Friends")

 

Bandcamp and Official.fm have more minimal players, focused on basics like downloading and sharing the track.

Pricing

So far, so good. But how much is this? Both SoundCloud and Official.fm run a freemium business model: they offer the core feature (streaming and sharing) for free, and then try to convert users into paid customers with premium features (usually customization, hosting space and analytics.)  

Bandcamp, instead, has a pure revenue-sharing model: they take a 15 percent cut of revenues, or 10 percent on revenue above $5,000 (don't forget to add Paypal's fee to that, though.)  For this reason, Bandcamp makes it extremely easy to set up paid downloads (supporting discount codes, pay what you want, etc.)  You can sell physical copies, and create something close to a private record shop. That's why Bandcamp allows you to upload as many songs as you want, while the other two offer limited space, unless of course, you pay.

And in pay-land, Official.fm is much cheaper than SoundCloud for a very similar offering. Of course, SoundCloud enjoys a more established presence, a richer community, and an infinite number of external apps that you can integrate with the service. But how many of these features do you really need?

 

Features

The market of embedded players is twisted: although the final product is very similar, there are a lot of differences, not only in user interface and experience, but also in branding and positioning. A close-up on each company is revelatory, particularly if we focus on weaknesses first.

 

Official.fm 

Cons

Official.fm is supposed to be a tool for professionals. When setting up your profile, you have to specify if you’re an artist, media professional, label or producer. This strategy might help to target a userbase that is more likely to convert to premium, at the expense of building a bigger and engaged community. Official.fm is also behind in website usability and user adoption. 

Pros 

The Swiss company is getting some love from musicians since it does not transcode the audio files like SoundCloud, thus preserving their original quality. And, the premium features are cheaper and easier to understand.  Official is clearly a work in progress, though it already does an amazing job of integrating tour dates, searching for music via tags and location, and making the upload process smooth and easy (there’s even upload software). It mirrors common SoundCloud features like playlist building, following people, ‘hearting’ songs, and the dropbox feature. 

 

SoundCloud 

Cons

Right now, SoundCloud’s biggest hurdle is monetization. Streaming is king on SoundCloud, and the buy button is nothing but an external link. If you have a Pro account, SoundCloud gives you information on who is listening to your music and where, but tells you little about who bought your stuff.  An insanely complicated pricing plan doesn’t help.

Pros

We’re not yet at the point where everyone is on SoundCloud, but these guys claim three million registered users. Rather quickly, the website has turned into a MySpace for an older and more sophisticated crowd, and its product-focused, API-geared approach has paid off. As a result, SoundCloud is the technology leader for music streaming and its rich market of apps is another step toward this ambitious goal.

And there’s a killer app.  The dropbox, a virtual mailbox for tracks, has turned out to be an amazing feature for media channels. Labels now have a SoundCloud account to showcase their latest releases. 

 

BandCamp 

Cons

Bandcamp is behind where SoundCloud is ahead, namely in audience engagement.  One example: you can neither comment on nor ‘like’ music.  But SoundCloud also excels in helping people discover the music they will eventually buy. On Bandcamp, promotion and marketing is completely left to the user (and you know that’s a lot of work.)

Pros

Bandcamp is the best at empowering users with sophisticated and insightful data, higher customization opportunities (url, format, pricing) and a clear focus on downloads. Your Bandcamp page wants to become your shop and website, and gives you tools that span SEO, SoundScan submission and a working shopping cart. It’s a different product and a different philosophy: their goal is to make it easier for people to buy music, and, by taking a percentage on the revenues, they perfectly align their interest with the artists’. 

 

Conclusion

Which makes choosing between SoundCloud or BandCamp like choosing between people knowing you, and people giving you money. In the end, you probably need both, but are you willing to pay both subscription and fees on sales? And what player will you embed? And how would you reconcile the double analytics? Buyers, beware of the headaches. Official.fm might have a lot of work to do, but it’s in a good position to grab the best of the other two competitors if it plays its cards well. 

Here’s a detailed chart of features...

 



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