Today Soundcloud announced full integration into WordPress.com. Like this:
House Music With Love #5 – Inner Journey (Mixed by Alex Esser) by House Music With Love
The wordpress.com blogers now enjoy the possibility to use a single line code to embed the wave-formed track-player with fully customizable colours right into a blog post. While self-hosted blogs like us can achieve the same result by installing a Soundcloud plugin similar to Smart YouTube, etc
So what’s the big deal, you say. Embeded soundcloud object is nothing new. But this, yet another, small step for Soundcloud is a part of giant step-by-step stride that, long term wise, makes the life a whole lot easier for us; music blogers. In this particular case reducing the amount of time spent uploading the mp3s to zippy/speedy/whatever/crapshare.
Let’s face it. Half of HMWL traffic comes from The Hype Machine and only 300 -500 of our 5000 weekly visitors do actually download the mp3s (speedyshare stats). The rest of the folks just pre-listen to the content and hopefully discover new music.
In my opinion, the next logical development step would be for The Hype Machine to integrate full Soundcloud support into their music aggregation service. Meaning that as soon as I post a new embeded soundcloud track here it would automatically appear on Hypem lists, letting their users vote it up or down and re-tweet it.
This would eliminate a lot of hustle for the bloggers, i.e downloading the track first and the re-uploading it to a random server or to YSI in order for it to appear on The Hype Machines/Elbows lists. (if you are not familiar with Hypem, make sure to check it out, since it’s one of the best online services for finding good music).
And while the blog technologies evolve, rather rapidly, making the life easier for music junkies like me, there are also winds of major changes blowing through the music industry itself.
Early this summer the HMWL crew made a collective decision to stop posting commercial releases at 320 kbps without permission.
Why? – you say
HMWL has been online (in different forms and shapes) since december 2007. To start with we were heavily criticized by the industry for “Killing Dance Music” (*quote – Michael Sershall; Eric Prydz’ Manager). Today, on the contrary, we are receiving 10-20 new tracks a day, sent to us by the labels and artists who actually want us to post their material in full quality. From artists like Miguel Migs, Moby, Paolo Mojo, My Favorite Robots, Junior Faria to name a few.
As we get such solid amounts of good, full quality tracks, there is no need for us to post commercial releases from Beatport top 10. Anyway, Beatport tracks are 1:30 – 1:60 $ each. Just collect five empty bottles and buy one.
Occasionally we do drop a commercial release, when we stumbling upon an exceptionally good track that we just HAVE to share with you guys. Then we make sure to drop the quality to 128 or 160 kbps and provide a link to the rest of the artist’s work. In my opinion the true internet audiophiles, who spend most of their time on sites like this one, do not really give a damn if the track is a 700 Meg Wav, 128 kbps mp3 or a Spotify stream.
Self-respecting DJs like us, on contrary, do make sure to purchase all the tracks in original and full quality in order not to run into any unpleasant surprises during a live gig. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Conclusion is. The synergy of tech-services such as Last.Fm, Soundcloud, Hype Machine, Elbows, Electronica Blips and WordPress are providing us, music bloggers, with tools that help us to do our thing more or less hustle-free. Thank you for job well done. Meanwhile the music industry is slowly starting to realize that if you are not out in the Long Tale you are simple not out there at all. No matter how talented you are. Thank you for keeping it real.
One question remains though. Which type of blogs will prevail in the future. Swehouse–type, that shamelesly (no offence) spit out every new single in full quality as soon as it hits the market or the opposite type, like Noise Porn, Data Sapiens, Discobelle and us that strive to provide the readers with fresh, new, unexplored, quality material, by constantly digging the net and using 95% legal promo-services?
The music industry (or at least parts of it) has surely made it’s decision sending us lot’s of new tracks, while doing their best to close down Swehouse and similar blogs. But the readers will alway be the ones to make the last call. Do you want all the latest tracks from Beatport and full albums? Or are you more into bootlegs, advance promos, out of print white labels like Ricardo Villalobos remix of Nina Simone? Only time will tell.
Let this sink. Fresh tracks for y’all tomorrow night.
//Sky
