Soundcloud Releases New App, Allows Universal to Flag Your Account (doandroidsdance.com)

Thanks. We changed the url from http://www.dancingastronaut.com/2014/07/soundcloud-continues....

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I just set up that command line client the other day too.

Yes,it really was. I am an old, classic, get off my lawn style person who never signed up for twitter or Facebook and still uses a dumbphone. But somehow I got onto SC and discovered a lot of great music there, which has led to a few hundred dollars of amazon purchases.

So it is something special, and I hate to see them mucking around with it ...

I think something similar will happen to Mixcloud too.

See U.S. licensing rules: http://support.mixcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/1595564

>Unfortunately for soundcloud, aren't they killing their main userbase?

It is possible that it was an "offer you can't refuse" type thing. I doubt they'd do it voluntarily.

> First, that is a low blow linking to others doing it.

I thought the same thing at first, but the users that are linked to are all big, big names that get millions of plays on Soundcloud that will never get takedowns, whether they have clearances or not. It's more like saying "why are you hassling me for my $10 unpaid fine when you don't care about these corporations' $100,000 unpaid fines" than it is about narcing on the competition.

No, it's not a low blow. It's exactly what happens all over the world: the little kid has to play by the rules while the big guys do whatever they please, get special deals and sometimes even a get-out-of-jail card for free.

I learned that the hard way in 2001 when the IFPI went after my links (yes, only links) to then popular sites like mp3board.com and others - while the biggest news portal in the country had exactly the same links and weren't prosecuted at all.

>And you have to pay extra to get most of the same information you get for free from youtube.

Well Youtube has advertisements, and soundcloud doesn't. Someone is still paying for you to get that information, it's just not you, on youtube. I do agree that their interface has gotten worse, though. Especially for tracking.

Soulection originally uploaded their shows to MixCloud, but made the move to SoundCloud about a year back. :(

http://www.mixcloud.com/soulection/

..if any HNers enjoy these tunes, the live show is every Saturday at 10am pst on rinse.fm.

Depends on how you want to find music. As a DJ, I actively dig for new music a lot. It is nice to be able to throw on some service that gives me a "radio" to passively find new tracks as well. I also suspect for most people "fresh direct" consumption of music fits into their view of how new music is found.

8tracks is user created playlists right? Why wouldn't that be useful — that's generally the best way to find music in a lot situations.

Slacker is internet radio I think and more run of the mill so not sure for that one.

Well if soundcloud was not around it just wouldn't be possible to keep up with the 600+ people I follow and even then a solid 50% of what is on their page is just stuff they like as well which introduces me to more people.

> Is it that hard to discover new music on one's own?

Yes, it is.

I'd point out that it is one corporation giving another corporation policing powers. A natural result of extending the rights and power of corporations in our society is that they replace our other existing social institutions.

> Why have we, as a society, become OK with handing over policing power to corporations unrestrained by due process?

These companies do not care about due process, they care about the bottom line of making a dollar at the end of the day. Soundcloud determined it is much less expensive for them to go this route than be sued by Universal. Every company follows this practice as for they are serving their best interest.

As a consumer your hope is that their best interest and your best interest share the inside of a Venn diagram.

I think it simply comes down to convenience.

Judging by my above comment, probably spectrum analysis.

Oh boo hoo. He's promoting his own internet radio show, it's up to him to work out clearances. He asks what basis they have for doing it, like choice of law etc., well read the ToS, that's why it's there. 'Other people do it too!' is about the most juvenile argument there is, and the fact that they haven't experienced problems yet is neither here nor there. Maybe Universal hasn't got around to yanking stuff from them yet, maybe they have proper clearances or pay ASCAP feees, or maybe Universal/Soundcloud is enforcing their copyright arbitrarily...which they're perfectly entitled to do as a private entity. Equal treatment under law only applies to the government, unless you can show you're being discriminated against as a member of a protected class.

So his problem is he doesn't know which song(s) is/are infringing? Take your tracklisting and check it against discogs.com or some other music publishing database, and see which songs were published by Universal Music. Maybe 30 minutes of work for a 1 hour show, tops. The responsibility to check clearances does lie with the person who wants to use a copyrighted work.

Edit: I realize this is an unpopular view, but if you're downvoting I invite you to spell out what you think is wrong about it. Every magazine/website/course aimed at budding record producers/DJs/musicians provides coverage of copyright and licensing issues, to help their readership collect what is owed to them as much as to avoid infringement. There is no way you can be an aspiring or actual professional in the music industry for any significant length of time and not be aware of your basic obligations in this area.

> You can't profit from other people's copyrighted material without their permission. That's just how copyright works.

Sure you can. "Fair use" is the most common example of that, but you don't need to make a fair use defense in order to find examples of people profiting off of others' copyrighted works legitimately.

In fact, it should be noted that a lot of famous songs you probably know are themselves based on copyrighted works. Coolio's "Gansta's Paradise"[0] and Kanye West's "Stronger"[1] are very famous examples. Not all samples are licensed - it's very common to use unlicensed samples, even in music released by major studios.

I don't know which artists are with which labels off the top of my head, but I'd bet anything Universal is profiting off of unlicensed samples for some of their artists. Many (most?) Soundcloud users, on the other hand, aren't making a single cent off of the music they post.

[0] samples large parts of "Pastime Paradise" by Stevie Wonder

[1] samples Daft Punk, but this was actually itself sampled Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby"

Building upon the cultural contributions of our past is how all of human civilization was built. Until the late twentieth century. Disney (for instance) strips our culture like a jackal, yet buys senators (such as Ernest Frederick "Fritz" Hollings) to subvert the law so they can keep it a one-way flow. To allow a few to subvert all of human existence for their personal gain is obscene.

Nobody on SoundCloud is profiting from other people's copyright works as well, at least not through that service. To date there's no royalty or revenue sharing model for artists there. Should every DJ who's ever performed be subject to takedown requests because they play other people's music publicly?

You should watch the documentary Everything is a Remix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGpmA4saEk

So many downvotes, and yet, I never said I was in favor of the practice. It's just the way the laws work. You can work to get them changed or you can ignore them, but if you ignore them, don't cry on the Internet that you got your stuff taken down.

You're completely right: artists who make mixes and use samples should probably do it above-board and follow all applicable copyright laws.

However, the problems are three-fold:

1) Lack of information. It looks like the new automated process provides no clues on what the infringing content was/is.

2) Lack of appeals process.

3) The fact that previously rolled out systems that have allowed major labels this sort of access to services (primarily YouTube) have been subject to abuse by the labels, taking down content that was original, and there has been no indication given that this won't happen here.

You've much more more faith in Universal respecting fair use than I have.

> If you actually give a shit, discover and promote new music from awesome bands that are not beholden to the labels. That's the only way to break the stranglehold.

This. If you get a promo from an artist, ask them, "Is this under copyright with a label? Sorry, in that case I can't play it."

Sounds to me like Universal has blanket permission to harass anyone, regardless how "underground" they are. Universal doesn't like your brand of competition? They'll just flag you for infringement.

Unless universal flags music they don't own.

Because you or I don't have a way to flag Universal's account? It seems odd that a third party has direct control over your Soundcloud account (which you may have paid for) without any recourse.

That's a much more legit complaint than the one in the source article, and as an electronic musician myself I can see how that would happen. Sadly Mixcloud has problems of its own, eg this, which I posted here the other day: http://support.mixcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/1595564...

Same thing happened to us, but with a couple of official remixes released on a sub-label of universal. The issue is that the content gets removed before you're able to verify it's yours.

I feel like they would have avoided a lot of negativity if they gave users a time window to verify before removal.