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I'm building Wavekit an audio hosting service

Pier

Pier

Senior Member
While building my sound design website (coming soon) I found the best way to easy host audio with a nice player and an easy embed is still Soundcloud.

It's what most sound designers, sample developers, etc, are using. The ones that aren't using Soundcloud are using some ugly audio player from WooCommerce or something similar. Very few have a decent audio player that's not Soundcloud. Even as a web developer, I couldn't find a decent player that looked good and was lightweight.

Why not Soundcloud?
- Your visitors are being tracked
- Their player heavily promotes their brand not yours
- There are a lot of bots with fake likes and followings
- Their pro plan is quite expensive for what you get ($144 per year)
- No control over the encoding quality

I looked for an alternative to Soundcloud for my purpose and didn't really find any. There are many podcast hosting platforms and music platforms, but nothing really for pros that want to showcase audio on their website.

The idea of the service would be to have a dashboard where you can upload audio files, select the encoding quality of the MP3, and then easily create an embed code for your website with a simple and beautiful player you can customize. You'd get analytics without the use of cookies so you don't have to annoy your users. The player would look 100% as if it was yours. No branding from the service.

Pricing would be much more competitive than Soundcloud. I'm thinking it would be something like $30 per year which should suffice for 90% of people, and then pay-as-you-go per GB stored/consumed.

Are there any features you'd like to have if you were using this service?
Click to read more...
 
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This sounds like a great idea

In terms of branding the artist versus the 'player' - will you have an upgrade/option to remove the name of the 'player' so the sole focus is on the artist's brand?
 
ChromeCrescendo said:
This sounds like a great idea

In terms of branding the artist versus the 'player' - will you have an upgrade/option to remove the name of the 'player' so the sole focus is on the artist's brand?
Click to expand...
The idea is that the player will not have any branding at all from the service. It will look 100% like a player from the artist.
 
I would definitely buy something like this. I don't like soundcloud too, and I don't like the lack of control.

Things to consider (which probably you do already):

- Styling (to fit the artists website)
- A batch uploader
- Decent file manager (Delete, Rename tracks, folders or organize if you have multiple websites)
- Albums / Playlists
- Mobile compatibility
- An easy to use encoding interface -> e.g. from Wav to a more web friendly format
- Variety of supported formats
- Tags and metadata such as description for each track, credits
- Sharing and compatibility with social media (as much as they support embedded formats)

Sounds fun, but a lot of work! 😬
 
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Nimrod7 said:
I would definitely buy something like this. I don't like soundcloud too, and I don't like the lack of control.

Things to consider (which probably you do already):

- Styling (to fit the artists website)
- A batch uploader
- Decent file manager (Delete, Rename tracks, folders or organize if you have multiple websites)
- Albums / Playlists
- Mobile compatibility
- An easy to use encoding interface -> e.g. from Wav to a more web friendly format
- Variety of supported formats
- Tags and metadata such as description for each track, credits
- Sharing and compatibility with social media (as much as they support embedded formats)

Sounds fun, but a lot of work! 😬
Click to expand...
Great ideas!

Yeah you will have all those :)
 
Perhaps this is implied or a foregone conclusion, but making sure users can't download the music in any way would be important. Unless the artists gives permission for this. I think SC does this too.
 
Thundercat said:
Perhaps this is implied or a foregone conclusion, but making sure users can't download the music in any way would be important. Unless the artists gives permission for this. I think SC does this too.
Click to expand...
Yes, I've thought about that.

The player would be streaming chunks of audio. Even if you got a "hacker" that knew how to get access to the URLs of those chunks, they would have to manually join them to get the complete audio file. This is what Soundcloud does btw.

Of course, you could add the option to download the whole file too.
 
Pier said:
While building my sound design website (coming soon) I found the best way to easy host audio with a nice player and an easy embed is still Soundcloud.

It's what most sound designers, sample developers, etc, are using. The ones that aren't using Soundcloud are using some ugly audio player from WooCommerce or something similar. Very few have a decent audio player that's not Soundcloud. Even as a web developer, I couldn't find a decent player that looked good and was lightweight.

Why not Soundcloud?
- Your visitors are being tracked
- Their player heavily promotes their brand not yours
- There are a lot of bots with fake likes and followings
- Their pro plan is quite expensive for what you get ($144 per year)
- No control over the encoding quality

I looked for an alternative to Soundcloud for my purpose and didn't really find any. There are many podcast hosting platforms and music platforms, but nothing really for pros that want to showcase audio on their website.

The idea of the service would be to have a dashboard where you can upload audio files, select the encoding quality of the MP3, and then easily create an embed code for your website with a simple and beautiful player you can customize. You'd get analytics without the use of cookies so you don't have to annoy your users. The player would look 100% as if it was yours. No branding from the service.

Pricing would be much more competitive than Soundcloud. I'm thinking it would be something like $30 per year which should suffice for 90% of people, and then pay-as-you-go per GB stored/consumed.

Are there any features you'd like to have if you were using this service?
Click to expand...
Do it. I'm in.
 
Sounds like a great idea.

Is is only you developing it? What (if any) ideas do you have in place if you decide you no longer wish to be involved, or can't keep up with the demand of keeping it running?
 
Soundcloud is basically.... evil.... so... yeah!
Just to chime in: A nice private playlists implementation would be an important element for me (I imagine you already considered that, but you never know)
All the best!
 
Pier said:
Yes, I've thought about that.

The player would be streaming chunks of audio. Even if you got a "hacker" that knew how to get access to the URLs of those chunks, they would have to manually join them to get the complete audio file. This is what Soundcloud does btw.

Of course, you could add the option to download the whole file too.
Click to expand...
Excellent! Sounds like you've thought it through!!
 
el-bo said:
Sounds like a great idea.

Is is only you developing it? What (if any) ideas do you have in place if you decide you no longer wish to be involved, or can't keep up with the demand of keeping it running?
Click to expand...
Indeed, it's only me.

Worst case scenario? I think the smoothest transition would be to open source the audio player so that it can be used with audio files hosted anywhere.

Obviously I'm biased, but I'm not investing a couple of months of my life into something I plan to abandon later on.
 
AudioLoco said:
Soundcloud is basically.... evil.... so... yeah!
Just to chime in: A nice private playlists implementation would be an important element for me (I imagine you already considered that, but you never know)
All the best!
Click to expand...
Yes, private audio sharing it's something I've thought about too. You will be able to share a playlist with a unique URL or even password protected.

I've always wanted to build something to share audio/video privately with a reviewing system that can have comments on a timeline. Like a producer/director making comments about the music at a particular point in time. I'm not sure there is market for that though.
 
Pier said:
Yes, private audio sharing it's something I've thought about too. You will be able to share a playlist with a unique URL or even password protected.

I've always wanted to build something to share audio/video privately with a reviewing system that can have comments on a timeline. Like a producer/director making comments about the music at a particular point in time. I'm not sure there is market for that though.
Click to expand...
That would be awesome indeed and extremely useful:)
 
Having alternatives to soundcloud is a great idea...
Audio hosting sounds similar to Octave, which Chris Randall (of AudioDamage plugins) launched a year or two ago...

https://octave.is
Video with timeline commenting is also available, I know its used a lot for VFX and soundmix reviews etc...
There is this one with frame accurate commenting:
www.frame.io

Home

Frame.io is the world's leading video review and collaboration platform. Share media, collect feedback, manage reviews, and deliver finished work faster — from anywhere in the world.
www.frame.io www.frame.io

And a comparison with others:
jonnyelwyn.co.uk

Comparing Online Video Review Tools | Jonny Elwyn - Film Editor

Which online video review service is the right tool for you? Check out this in-depth comparison of the main products to find your best fit.
jonnyelwyn.co.uk jonnyelwyn.co.uk
 
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Thanks for the links @timprebble !

Octave seems bit similar although it seems more geared towards musicians that want to showcase their music.

My service is more of a general solution to host audio files with a custom player. Initially smaller files like product demos and music, and later on podcasts with RSS on your custom domain.
 
Pier said:
Thanks for the links @timprebble !

Octave seems bit similar although it seems more geared towards musicians that want to showcase their music.

My service is more of a general solution to host audio files with a custom player. Initially smaller files like product demos and music, and later on podcasts with RSS on your custom domain.
Click to expand...

Gotcha!

One feature that would be invaluable would be some form of bulk import, for example I currently have (goes & checks) 636 tracks on soundcloud, most are sound library previews. I can easily download them all (and I do so regularly so as to have an ongoing archive of them all) It would be a painful job to manually upload them all to a new service, one by one, and then retrieve an embed code for each. But it does feel like an inevitable task, for all the same reasons you plan to make an alternative, sooner or later soundcloud wont be my solution.

The only other option I thought of was to commission software to generate auto sync waveforms as video, and then use youtube as an embedded playback device. But that would be far from ideal...
 
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