The streaming services allow you to play audio and music online from a computer or any device that connects to the internet without having to download anything. Youtube is the most important video streaming site, Spotify and Grooveshark are the streaming music sites and Soundcloud is the most important site where anyone can publish audio recordings .
Founded in Berlin in 2007, SoundCloud has established itself as a digital content distribution platform and as an online community for musicians.
Compared to Youtube where videos are uploaded by users, in Soundcloud everyone can upload audio recordings that are usually music tracks but can be anything else.
The important thing is that the music or recordings are original, covers of original songs, remixes or whatever you want for which you have the rights.
Soundcloud is not a site where you can hear or share the songs of famous singers, but of emerging artists who create their channel and can be followed by fans.
There are three subscription levels to choose from in SoundCloud: with a free account, you can upload a maximum of 120 minutes of audio recordings and you can see some statistics.
By paying an upgrade you can get a Pro account with the possibility of having more statistics, hiding comments and uploading all the audio you want.
Getting started with SoundCloud is simple, in this guide we see the basic steps of what can be done.
The registration of a SoundCloud account can be done through a Facebook or Google account or simply by using an email address.
To get started, click the " Sign up " button on the home page.
Musicians can create a profile from the top navigation bar by pressing the Edit button and adding links to their personal site, Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, Tumblr and other services.
Once the profile is ready you can upload the songs by pressing the Upload button next to the avatar figure in the navigation bar at the top.
With a free account, as mentioned above, you can upload up to 120 minutes of recorded tracks .
After loading a song, write the title, a description and assign it a tag to make it easily searchable.
It is also possible to add a link to purchase that song from the "More Options" menu above the "Save" button.
The purchase entitles those who buy the track license to use it as they wish.
The songs can be organized into albums or collections by creating a playlist .
By hovering over a song, you can press the " Add to playlist " button to create a playlist and add the track.
Once you have made a list, you can edit it by pressing on the pen icon on the right under the wave.
You can then drag and drop the songs into the playlist to reorder them.
You can also edit the playlist name, you can edit the permalink, add an image, edit the tags and write a description where you can also insert links to external sites.
The playlist can be played continuously without commercial breaks and each track is displayed in a waveform.
The music player can also be left playing while exploring other tracks and other users.
You can also listen to the popular tracks right now within the SoundCloud community or browse the different musical genres or browse other audio content such as audiobooks or spoken comments.
Perhaps one of the best features of SoundCloud is its social network model, like a Facebook dedicated to music, where you can keep track of updates and news from favorite artists, record labels and news agencies.
Every musician on SoundCloud can be followed as it is in any social network and groups of users can also be followed.
In SoundCloud there is also the possibility to comment on a song expressing its opinion on a song.
Since SoundCloud is a community, each song can be shared by the listener and published on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and via Email.
The most useful sharing tool in SoundCloud is however the embed code, a portion of lines in HTML to be pasted in a post or on a page of your website to have that song also listenable outside of SoundCloud.
If you create a site or a blog, you can add the music recorded and uploaded to SoundCloud at no cost and freely.
The embeddable reader can be customized by pressing on the pencil, changing the color and size.
Some artists can even make sound and audio tracks downloadable by enabling the download icon under the waveform.
Those who publish new content can check the listening statistics of the tracks by pressing the down arrow next to the avatar figure in the navigation bar at the top.
With a free account, the number of total plays, the number of downloads, the number of comments and percentage changes are shown.
For other in-depth analyzes you need to pay for a Pro account.
The Apps page in SoundCloud leads to a large collection of applications, programs and web services that work in conjunction with Soundcloud.
SoundCloud also has mobile apps for Android smartphones and tablets, iPhones and iPads.
For those who did not know him yet, it is a good opportunity to start discovering new singers and DJs in SoundCloud by exploring the various categories even without registering.
If you want to upload your audio files to make yourself known on the internet as a singer, musician, commentator or player, SoundCloud is the right site, more than Youtube if you don't want to be shown on video.
