Soundcloud's social features

[timglorioso]

@anon15453463

We will never know everyone’s need.

I feel this. Software made within capitalism inevitably serves the majority. No team can make all features. So you build features for 80% of your users. Actually, it might be even worse: Build features for the 10% of users generating 80% of your revenue. 90% of users get a worse experience.

@anon15453463

And I don’t think good UX is enough, because UX is abstraction of underlying functioning. … With the right knowledge all features exist already.

I like this sentiment, and I think there’s room for improvement on both sides. To me, meaningful UX improvement would generally look like lower barrier to entry and more flexibility and control. I don’t have to know how a car works to use it. And I don’t have to know how the engine works to change the audio system.

@anon15453463

If we find a way to render our peers curious to try and experiment with how they communicate with their digital world, we might not have to all use them the same way.

Agreed. Though, I worry that many features as knowledge have fallen out of reach. People who get curious may just as easily get discouraged. We need to bridge the knowledge gap with tools that encourage digging deeper and asking “how can I change that?”

Optimistically, I believe that with the right (builder) knowledge, all building blocks are already out there. And so are the people with the creativity and drive to try the new things that others build.

Did I just make a really long excuse for wanting to build things? Maybe. One thing seems true: we need to spark more curiosity for knowledge. And I think better tools can do that. As they are, computers are just too dang hard to know how to change.

@icaria36

As a result of these ~1-click and mobile-first features, users get:

• A beautiful feed with music posted or reposted by the people you follow. Press play and let it sound, skipping to next/previous whenever you want.
• A gorgeous player visualizing the users, the comments and the emoji reactions in real-time.

All this is very engaging for listeners – also for artists.

I seem to recall a thread on here talking about some feedback service that anonymized the track… Anyway, the sway of perception also applies to our tools, the emotional experience of using them, that stamp of social approval when we tell our friends about all the features. It’s similar to (same as?) the convenience problem. Commercial interface design has spoiled us with frictionlessness and visual appeal. Just as we might build tools that help us do good things that are inconvenient, might we build tools that help us do good things that are exposed in a way that’s, well, not much to look at?

It’s funny, because after all this I still haven’t even responded to the main topic, and it’s a topic I love. Social features do feel overlooked in the landscape of music tools. I’ve always loved the idea of nurturing more interaction between musicians and listeners. Spotify makes musicians feel distant, listeners are just a sum of plays. We need more ways to build community, not grow audiences. Maybe I’ll come back with some concrete ideas

[icaria36]

@timglorioso and anyone else interested in building things. I can contribute ideas, feedback, testing… sadly not coding skills.

[Jay]

And I can maybe contribute coding skills, not so much ideas. Professional coder since 1972. Depends on the language selected. Do programming now-a-days purely for the thrill.

[simon]

Reallly loved this reply, thanks @timglorioso

[Kiffie]

Over the last 4 years ive had the following accounts comment on my soundcloud, in order of frequency.

1. Scammers trying to sell me bot plays.
2. Alts made by a serial harasser of mine with accounts such as “KeyFeeAte” (my handle used to be kiffie8 everywhere). Or directly disgusting parodies of me like “Piffy” which is still active here… Stream Piffy music | Listen to songs, albums, playlists for free on SoundCloud
3. Some friends who i know on socials anyway.

I have reported all of the bad actors (scammers and stalkers) to soundcloud. They have removed none of them.

The issue people seem to keep forgetting is that without human moderation, none of these platforms are useful at all.

[Mel]

Agreed about moderation. I think it’s often an afterthought in software projects, but if you’ve experienced harassment it’s forefront in your mind.

The good thing is there are Fedi projects who are taking the lead on this (thinking of Gotosocial in particular), so if we are using our existing social accounts as an integration with a music app there are lots of benefits:

• don’t need to rebuild your entire social graph on yet another platform
• getting recommendations from friends on an app geared towards listening to music
• use your preferred block list subscriptions etc

[Kiffie]

Yes I suppose so.

I just feel spread to thin. I need to focus on fewer, higher impact, platforms.

Do you think this would work?

[Mel]

Not sure what works haha! But I’ve done that for sure. Can’t see any real point in maintaining a presence on corpo platforms that don’t lift a finger to help artists’ discoverability, really. Most platforms want you to promote them…