Over the last four months SoundCloud has added significant visual, search, and messaging capability to its environment; here’s the rundown:
In late January, SoundCloud released its Visual Player. The Player adds larger graphic backgrounds to your embedded tracks. Below an embed of a tune by Punjabi singer and actor Gippy Grewal. Some embedded visuals seem to lose the upper portion of the graphic, still the effect is fun.
Earlier last month, the application launched a new messaging system. It allows you to send messages with tracks to other SoundCloud users.
Finally, back in November, SoundCloud launched its “Explore” feature, basically an ongoing cascade of new uploads. Once you are on the Explore page, pick from a wide variety of “trending music” categories: alternative rock, hip hop, classical, you get the idea. You can also opt for “trending audio,” a cascade of podcasts.
The curation on these channels is kind of catch as catch can, but maybe that’s more about me. Some of the “classical” tunes are just homegrown easy listening stuff. And I just don’t get “World” music anymore. Why is music from Punjab India or Egypt “World” music,” as opposed to music from India or Egypt? Having said that, the World channel is quite enjoyable, whatever the category actually means.
Now I can’t resist posting a visual embed of me playing a Bach Prelude (please be kind).
We cover social music sharing communities every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.
