Poll: Would you pay for audio hosting as outlined in this post?

[Kenni]

Hi all,

I've long been playing around with the idea of an audio hosting service, where the primary focus is to give people a place to store their audio. To begin with, it was more based on personal wants and needs in a service, which turned out to be really simple: I personally don't need a place to store files used for collaboration, there's other means to that, but it should be possible for me to store audio for just that if I wanted to anyway. Primary need is a place to upload a file, choose the compression depth (or uncompressed), and a player so I can listen to the stuff over the web (say, at work).

Allihoopa covered nearly all my needs, and to some extent, so does SoundCloud.

Being a developer, I do have a hard time not trying to cover my own needs when it comes to services or a specific function, or even a community where I can talk about writing music, and every once in a while, I end up with something that others might be able to use as well, which is the reason for this poll. I know there's only two very simple answers, but I'd like to get a discussion going instead of trying to cover specific details based on my own assumptions.

The service: Short term

You would get 200mb storage free of charge. When uploading files, you can manage how much of your storage is used by selecting the level of compression (or even uncompressed). I imagine options like:

• Mp3: 320kbit
• Mp3: 192kbit
• Mp3: 128kbit
• Uncompressed (WAV/AIFF)

This list is obviously not final, compression could very well just be FLAC, but with the option of uncompressed audio, you'd actually be able to use this to share specific exports for collaboration purposes.

- Uploads would, by default, be "unlisted" - Nothing is public unless the user choose to make it public. That could either be by sharing a generated public link, or adding their uploads to pre-defined "Collections" or "Playlists".
- General concept is that it's always the user who decides what's public or not, how, and where.
- A player would be featured.
- Storage capacity can be expanded to 1Gb for $x/month. (More exact calculations are needed, but we're operating within the $3-$5 limit).

The general outline of the terms would be that "This is not a streaming service, but a hosting service. We don't collect royalties, we don't own any rights to any of the content, and even for public audio, the exclusive rights is and always will be the authors."

I know there's dropbox, google drive, onedrive and the likes, but I want a service that only focus on audio. The reason 1Gb isn't free is to avoid becoming the next SoundCloud or Allihoopa, simple as that.

Would you, as a user, ever subscribe to that?

[aeox]

What would be the benefit to using it over Soundcloud?

[Loque]

I would probably be too miserly for a storage service. I always missed something from the other platforms that would give me something more, which I really would pay for. Dunno, maybe a radio service where ppl can listen to and vote for tracks. Something which give me a better chance to get listened to.

[aeox]

I would probably be too miserly for a storage service. I always missed something from the other platforms that would give me something more, which I really would pay for. Dunno, maybe a radio service where ppl can listen to and vote for tracks. Something which give me a better chance to get listened to.

Oh, so it's a storage service?

Okay then my question would be: What would be the benefit of using it over google drive?

[Kenni]

I'll try to keep answers Short.

There could easily be a radio Playlist, where people could listen to your music. The kicker here is that you make the decision that your music is public. The local laws about audio and royalties are difficult and kills most streaming services, so it's important that all of these decisions are made by the users. The $5 price tag is well beyond the price of the actual GB storage and running the service, but it would allow for the service to grow (it could potentially become a pipeline for people to push their music to Spotify et al) without a change of the subscription fee.

There's probably no real benefit compared to SoundCloud or even storage solutions like Dropbox, other than an API that could allow for 3rd parties to integrate with the service. Say that the price tag allows the service to grow in a way that storage capacity rises 10 fold without a change of subscription fee, and DAWs can integrate with a user's workspace through an API, much like a "Drop to Allihoopa" button, except with multi-track support.

[Kenni]

I would probably be too miserly for a storage service. I always missed something from the other platforms that would give me something more, which I really would pay for. Dunno, maybe a radio service where ppl can listen to and vote for tracks. Something which give me a better chance to get listened to.

Oh, so it's a storage service?

Okay then my question would be: What would be the benefit of using it over google drive?

The benefit would, short term, be the ease of use. Drop your export directly, choose file type (compressed/uncompressed), share link.

[Kenni]

As an addition, a subscription fee would be further down the line. The prototype or MVP would be the same as above, just free.

[aeox]

Oh, so it's a storage service?

Okay then my question would be: What would be the benefit of using it over google drive?

The benefit would, short term, be the ease of use. Drop your export directly, choose file type (compressed/uncompressed), share link.

I think it could be something I'd use if I had a regular income. But it's hard to determine without seeing it/using it.

I like the idea of radio playlists/voting. Similar to what Drooble is doing. But, not sure if that's beyond the scope of your idea.

[tibah]

I guess the question for most around here in general is - what do I do with my content / music? Where to put it? Do I keep it for myself, because eventually, no one cares, since there is too much music around? Do I want to ride the train and enter the jungle with streaming? Why not join flat earth society and have that conversation?

Share to "anything" is probably the point I'm trying to make.

I like your idea because it's driven by this community.

[guitfnky]

in theory, I think it's a great idea...the more options people have, the better, IMO. that said, personally, I'd need more before I'd consider subscribing. it sounds like the main thrust is that you can save and store stereo files. 200 megabytes would be way too small to be used to store working files from a DAW, and that's where my personal interest lies.

to me, the idea of collaboration means having *a lot* of flexibility using someone else's session files. unfortunately, that means fairly large amounts of storage for an affordable price, and usually, that means pricing is based on storage capacity, not on audio quality. (at the end of the day, we're all sort of audiophiles, right? so, for me, lossless should be a given.) I could see lossy formats being useful for basic song structuring and playing around with ideas, but when the rubber hits the road, that would seriously hamper my consideration of which pricing tier is appropriate (i.e. I'd have to go for the most expensive plan by default, to make sure the sound quality is adequate).

that said, that actually gives me an idea...you could maybe do pricing on an individual basis, by audio file...say you're just trying to work out a song structure, you might be passing files back and forth at the lower end of quality, but once you're ready to start putting a proper mix together, users could opt to use the higher quality storage options for those files. maybe have X-number of higher-quality files you can share per month for one tier, and for higher tiers, have X+Y numbers of additional quality file storage? not sure, really...just thinking off the top of my head.

[Jmax]

In theory it makes sense. But consider that for $1.99 you get 100GB with Drive or $9.99 for a TB. That pricing for cloud storage can't really be beaten. Music from Drive is also playable and easy to share and organize your folders. You are also able to share your cloud space with another user.

In terms of collaboration I've discovered Bandlab. Which seems to be very good and where all the Allihoopa rejects have ended up (included). Bandlab also has a great an app.. so you can play your track from that which is pretty awesome. Google drive is a little bit more clunky but playing tracks from there is also pretty easy.

So for me to buy into to your hosting it would have to connect us extremely well along the lines of what allihoopa's infrastructure was doing. Or else I wouldn't see much point in it.



Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

[wowhow]

Honestly, I can"t imagine myself paying 3-5 dollars for a soundcloud-like storage space when soundcloud is free - especially for 200mb of space but DAW multi-track integration sounds amazing!

[Kenni]

Honestly, I can"t imagine myself paying 3-5 dollars for a soundcloud-like storage space when soundcloud is free - especially for 200mb of space but DAW multi-track integration sounds amazing!

The 200mb would be free. The $3-$5 would be for increasing the limit.

In comparison, 200mb would allow for ~2h30m of compressed audio (Mp3 192kbit), where SoundCloud is 3 hours with their free tier. Uncompressed audio (44.1kHz, 16 bit stereo) would be a little less than 19 minutes to take up 200mb.

[raymondh]

I think this could be a great platform for some folks, but I'm pretty committed to the Soundcloud bandwagon and pay that subscription.

[retreed]

I think there is two kinds of people, one who want an easy and convenient way of doing things and the tinkerers.

Today there is convient uploaders available, integrated in your OS, available for free (most people still did not notice that paying with your data is also a payment) so paying for your service is hardly an option. Soundcloud allows for easy sharing and commenting on your music without hassle. It has a payment option but still they struggle for years now. Allihoopa was not able to find tightened ground. People do not want to pay for this virtual stuff with real money (unless there is something in like a nice community, feel free to read the long story below how I personally felt about joining a community and paying some euros for it some years ago.)

And for the tinkerers, maybe props offer an "Export API" to allow doing whatever you want with the file, e.g. uploading it to your own cloud using your MP3 codec of choice.



(Long story: Back in the days (like 15 years ago) I was part of an amateur platform that allowed you to upload two MP3 files for free to showcase your music. You were also able to get 500 MB of storage and "unlimited" MP3 upload for a few euros. At the same time I was running my own mail server and webspace stuff that was least expensive when you count the storage costs, so I guess I count to the tinkerer guys that consider twice spending money on a platform or using an own solution. I still joined that platform and paid the few euros because it had a community around discussing interesting stuff, commenting on music. The platform had a "media" team making some interviews with people who wanted, showcase some tracks of the weeks etc. This was interesting for amateur musicians to show their music and get some attention from like-minded people. I would not have paid it simply for uploading music that generates a player/link.

I think Reasonstation can also be compared to that sort of community, even providing project files. How did they finance back then? Was financial issues the problem they disappeared?

Aside from those communities back then convenient uploaders like dropbox/whatevercloud were not available so people, who wanted convenient solutions joined such communities and simply took part. I think think these communities do not really exist anymore in an active way or are often filled with lots of negative comments and jealousy. I think I checked out a remix contest on splice recently and this was a good example where people went rampage about others having more listeners, using bots etc. I would not pay for being part of such a begrudging community today.)

[pushedbutton]

Bandcamp tho.

[craven]

I really liked the 'drop to Allihoopa' function from within Reason as it was a very convenient one click solution to share WIP tracks. If Props would allow a customised, scripted command in Reason so any sound export service could be integrated via their API, that'd be great.

[demt]

just for reason users sounds good