It seems almost daily we’re hearing stories about SoundCloud alienating its core user base of producers and artists: this time it's widely respected duo Boombox Cartel saying the platform inexplicably deleted their entire profile even though they had zero copyright strikes, joining the likes of Kaskade and Martin Garrix who’ve faced similar issues;
We’ve covered a range of SoundCloud alternatives here on EDM Sauce in the past, but it seems we’ve overlooked one that’s been gaining a cult following among producers and DJs over the past year; Audiomack. The NYC-based startup unveiled a complete rebuild of its desktop platform late last week, and we are seriously impressed – this is the closest thing we’ve seen yet to a potential SoundCloud alternative:
Primarily known as a hip-hop platform until now, Audiomack’s new design takes a few cues from SoundCloud and YouTube; we found the sidebar, which lets you browse your account and visit the top pages of the site, to be really useful. The layout is clean and responsive, and it’s a far cry from Audiomack’s old design, which looked more like a mixtape site.
The Audiomack team says they’re solving several problems that exist in the current online streaming market – first and foremost, that many sites (SoundCloud included) charge artists a substantial amount for hosting. Audiomack is completely free, with no premium accounts, and offers artists unlimited storage, which compares favorably to SoundCloud’s $180 yearly cost for unlimited storage.
Audiomack is also tackling the problem of some creators not being compensated for their work, even as sites are littered with ads next to their content; Audiomack pays out a competitive per-stream rate to any artists/labels doing a decent amount of streams.
It appears labels and artists are taking notice; a quick browse of the new site shows Soulection, Ultra Records, Fool’s Gold, Throttle, Oshi, Cavalier, Tipsy Records, EDM Network, No Sleep, Viceroy, Tim Gunter, and others among the site’s electronic artist roster.
Audiomack has also become just the third platform (joining SoundCloud and BandCamp) to integrate with cult favorite Hype Machine, which many electronic producers, namely The Chainsmokers, have used to grab attention at the beginning of their careers. As of last week, any track on Audiomack is supported on HypeM’s charts if it’s posted on a blog HypeM indexes.
The only real weak point we found was an upload process that seems to be more reminiscent of the old site; when we reached out for comment, Audiomack told us that the priority was getting the desktop rebuild out first, with a redesign of the entire upload process and artist dashboard coming shortly after.
It will be interesting to see if Audiomack’s sleek new design can lure more producers away from SoundCloud, which currently dominates the marketplace. Boasting over 5 million monthly users, and with its mobile apps sitting in the Top 50 of both Android and iOS charts, Audiomack is already far ahead of many of the other sites cropping up hoping to gain market share from SoundCloud – we can’t find any reason producers & DJ’s shouldn’t be using it, especially since it’s free.
