#this game is basically just me exposing my very eclectic taste in music

[sunshinycc]

17 & 20

Spotify wrapped ask game!

17) Saddest song: "Nobody" by Mitski

20) Happiest song: either "Lollipop" by MIKA or "Just the Two of Us" by Grover Washington Jr and Bill Withers

[kuiperblog]

Soundcloud might be the last cool place on the internet

I recently found myself thinking, “You know, out of all of the platforms that are built on user-generated content, Soundcloud is the last one that feels cool.”

This is kind of a gripe about an issue typified by Youtube, which is the ultimate example of a platform where people slavishly produce content fitting the mold of what (they think) the algorithm demands.  Like, I understand that the quality and consistency of  content on Youtube in 2019 is undeniably higher than it was back in 2007 in the era of Youtube poops and jump-cut vlogs, but over time it feels like there’s a certain kind of creativity that just isn’t allowed to surface on Youtube anymore.  Youtube used to feel cool and indie, like it was on the frontier, and as the experience became more and more “optimized,” that got squeezed out of it.

I’ve seen the same thing happen to different platforms to varying degrees. But Soundcloud still feels cool and weird in all of the best ways. I’m not even sure how to describe my “browsing habits” on Soundcloud, it just feels like the only place where, without any real deliberate digging, I can find a deluge of content that is both exactly to my liking and also completely novel. And not “novel” as in “new to me,” but as in “this track has less than 1000 plays, but due to my weirdly eclectic taste, hearing it is maybe the best thing to happen to me all day.”

I’ve been trying to puzzle through why that is.

Is it something about the content that gets posted to Soundcloud and the people who make it? It could be. Youtube seems to attract people with dreams of becoming a professional Youtuber, and also people who are clout-hungry, wanting to turn their “personality” into a product.  From what I can tell, it’s basically impossible to make money on Soundcloud, and in the corner of the platform that I’ve dug myself into, it doesn’t feel like it’s the kind of thing that would appeal to someone lusting for clout. Like, obviously everyone wants attention, but people don’t aspire to be a “famous Soundcloud rapper,” they want to be a famous rapper. (Whereas there are actually kids who aspire to be “Youtubers.”)  Soundcloud is not the end game, unless your only end game is sharing the weird tunes you cooked up in your bedroom with the world.  It feels a lot like Youtube circa 2007, or Newgrounds circa 2003: a place where you can become “internet famous” in the way that Egoraptor the flash cartoonist was internet famous (as opposed to the way that Arin Hanson the Game Grump is currently internet famous). The attitude seems to be one of, “Look what I made!” rather than “Look at me!”

Is it something in particular about music? It could just be that it’s easier for me to complain about a crappy Youtube video than a mediocre track because the Youtube video demands your full attention, whereas the track could pass in one ear and out the other while I’m immersed in some engrossing task, and there are certain moods where basically all I want is a rhythmic beat in my ears, whereas Youtube videos should delight or entertain or inform (or all of the above simultaneously).  Also, a lot of the music I listen to is basically made by one person.

Related to both of the above, there’s something about the Matthew Principle which comes into play with something like Youtube, where the site is constantly trying to get me to watch celebrities on Jimmy Fallon and trailers for blockbuster movies and music videos for the most popular songs in the world, because this is what other people are into, and I often find myself clicking on this because as generic and middling as it is, it’s also clearly a class above a lot of the content on Youtube in terms of production value.  You can tell the difference between a Youtube that was made by a team of 10 people versus made by one person in their bedroom, and even if the solo act is more creative or authentic or “pure,” it’s easier for the team to assemble something that feels like a “superior product.”  I’m not so sure the same thing is true of music: does the song that was engineered in a lab really sound “higher fidelity” than a mashup made by a disciple of Isosine working with nothing but a Macbook?

Another thing that Soundcloud has going for it is that you can “repost” tracks, in the same way that you would “retweet” on twitter or “reblog” on tumbr.  When you follow a creator on Soundcloud, you’re not only seeing their content, you’re seeing all content that they see fit to repost, which tends to be similar to their content most of the time, so there’s a lot of user-curation going on.  I occasionally see the community tab on Youtube used the same way (people making a post to say, “Hey, check out this cool video that my friend posted” or “I just appeared in a video on this other channel, go check it out”) but it’s not part of the platform’s DNA like it seems to be on Soundcloud.

It could be any of these things.  But I also find myself wondering if Soundcloud, despite feeling like the most indie, least algorithmic site that still has a soul, might actually be better on the back of its recommendation engine.

See, there’s a problem with Youtube’s algorithm, which is that for all of the data they gather and analytics they perform, it has a tough time identifying good content.  It can easily identify engaging content, but content can be engaging for a lot of reasons: maybe the content is engaging because it makes you mad (and so if you watch a single clip of Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder you will see nothing but their faces on your Youtube recommendations page for days, and it feels like there is an entire genre of Youtube channel that can be best described as “outrage merchant”).  Maybe the content is “engaging” because the video creator gave you a clickbait headline that made you ask a question, and managed to construct the video in such a way that every sentence makes you feel like you’re almost on the verge of getting what you clicked the video for, and 8 minutes later you’ve realized you’ve been watching a barely-competent video in hopes of it delivering on a promise that never fulfilled. (This video will be objectively more engaging than a video that just gives you want it promised up front, meaning that optimizing for engagement makes the content of the platform objectively worse!)  The like/dislike bar should help in theory, but “like” can mean either “this is the best video I have ever seen” or “this video is uninteresting but I agree with this person’s opinion and want to reward them for having the right opinion.”  Also, the fact that “calls to action” (smash that like button, remember to subscribe) are objectively shown to lead to higher engagement (despite subjectively making the content worse) sort of expose the problem inherent in Youtube metrics.

Fundamentally, the problem that Youtube seems to struggle with is that it’s really hard to reward exceptionally good content, because once you’ve watched the entire video, liked it, and left an encouraging comment, what else is there to do? How is a robot supposed to distinguish my response to a 7/10 video from my response to a 10/10 video?  Or even a crappy video that I watched to completion despite the fact that it was crappy?

Soundcloud doesn’t have this problem.  When people listen to a song and like it, they don’t just listen to it once.  They listen to it multiple times.  Dozens of times.  When I really like a song, it’s possible for me to reward that song in a way that makes a robot recognize, “Hey, this person really likes this song.”  And I’m not even consciously rewarding it; though I will sometimes hit the “like” button, when I re-listen to a song (either by manually pulling it up, or by putting it on a playlist which ensures that I’ll hear it at least once a week), I’m doing that selfishly, for me.  I don’t need to hear a person’s voice saying “Remember to add this song to your work playlist,” I do that by myself.  And the “repost” function also allows people with followings on Soundcloud to reward good content by making it appear on their followers’ timelines.  (These power users also tend to be the people who have some modicum of taste, or at the very least people who are plugged into the interests of the platform with an understanding of what people enjoy.)

Regardless of how it’s happened, it’s still kind of wild that Soundcloud manages to score higher than almost any platform across all of my personal metrics: how unique and novel the content is, the median quality level of the content that’s automatically served to me, the infrequency with which I encounter low-quality content, how often it makes feel “this piece of content is my new favorite thing,” and just about anything I’d correlate with overall goodness and enjoyment.  I’m increasingly of the opinion that Soundcloud might be my favorite part of the Internet.