How to share your music!

[JerryPH]

There are dozens ways that one can get their music out there for other people to hear and in this post, I would want to talk about a couple of the options available to us that the members of this forum have kind of accepted and used in the past and serve as a couple of different ways to share their music with us.

The first step would be to depend on the basic format that we want to share, either audio only or video with audio.  The majority of people who do share their music with other board members here in general have accepted two methods.

Soundcloud
YouTube

SoundCloud is a service that does a lot of very cool things, however, the part that interests us the most is its ability to let you upload an MP3 file and share it with your friends here, by posting a link that if clicked on, lets us hear your music through your web browser of choice.

YouTube is a well known site, it permits you to upload video files and then provides you with several ways to share your video either via providing a link or even embedding an entire video into a post here on the forum.

Both SoundCloud and YouTube are free services, but do require that you create an account there before you are able to upload and share, however, most of the time, this is a very easy thing to do.  Unless I am requested to, I wont go through the steps of how to open an account with each service.

Later on today, I will return and modify this post (or create another post), that details a couple of options of how to create that MP3 file or video and upload it to your service of choice and how to share the results of all your hard work for your friends to enjoy.  

 

[Matt Butcher]

Just a couple of comments: I like SoundCloud as the sound quality is good and the memory requirements of audio only files are far less than for videos on YouTube. Also a reasonable number of people search on SoundCloud looking for followers, some obviously to try to push up some meaningless statistic, others genuinely want to make contact with other musicians, and I've come across some good music that way. The software only records a listen when someone has heard the whole thing so if you are a glory hunter YouTube will give you more hits. You can have three hours for free, then after that you have to pay, which currently stops me from putting more on: what I should really do is archive the worst recordings then I would be fine. There have been intermittent problems with getting onto the site in particular from older operating systems.

YouTube: sound quality is worse and you have to post a video so more memory is needed and (worse still in my case) people can see what you look like. If you are sensitiive bear in mind that some people may "dislike" your video, in my case a very reasonable reaction. It is completely free which is great. If you are better looking and a better player than me you may have a tiny chance to go viral.

Facebook: there is a lot of Italian accordion music that is Facebook only. As far as I can see the players don't see it as music for recording, they tend to see it as live music and post the Facebook videos as a fun record of an event more than as a finished product in itself. This is great if you follow some good players, but it also means it's very hard to find stuff from the past as it's hidden somewhere in the depths of someone's timeline. I love following the players on Facebook but I wouldn't post my own recording their if I wanted it to be found.

Finally the penny just dropped that you can just attach an mp3 to your post. This is quite attractive to me as a way of sharing a recording with the forum e.g. for comments. This is what I plan to do with some stuff I am working on now.

 

[JerryPH]

Thank-you Matt, all good info.

I will be doing tutorials on 3-4 methods that I think are good alternatives for people to share music, so people have not just a choice, but will have a bit of a better idea how to do it.

Hopefully more people will later chime in and add how they are doing it or talk about what they do differently as well. With a little luck, more people will start to post their work/progress because they will see how easy and fun it is.

 

[bocsa]

(...) I will be doing tutorials on 3-4 methods (...)

Looking forward to that  

 

[JerryPH]

Here is the first, and what I feel is the easiest way, using DropBox.

The advantage to this system is that we have total control over the file locally, so if we want to delete it, we just delete the file locally, DropBox deletes it from it's cloud-based servers and it is gone.  Another advantage is that it has a free service that lets you use up to 2.25gb of files.  

Disadvantage... you have to have the files locally, so if you delete them by accident, they are deleted everywhere and non-accessible anymore.  If you recopy it back, the link changes, so for us to see it here, the link in the post would have to be reposted.  Also, you need to have a program that can play the file format that is uploaded, like in this case, you need an application that can play MP3 files.

[video=youtube]ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNyQzAkgBc4[/video]

Next one will be on using SoundCloud.  

Edit:  Sorry for the edit, I modified it so that the video appears here inside the post.

 

[JerryPH]

Here is the 2nd video of how to use SoundCloud.com.  Very similar to DropBox except users do not need to have any special programs installed other than a web browser, so I suppose that would be advantage #1.  Its pretty easy to use and people can upload and delete files quite easily.  The disadvantage here is that as soon as you upload something there, you give SoundCloud full rights to let them basically do anything they want with your files, including selling it for profit.  This is a copy/paste of their terms of use you hereby grant such licenses to SoundCloud on a limited, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free and fully paid basis.

Not important if you are an amateur, but if you are a professional, you just gave away rights to SoundCloud to sell your work and give you nothing... keep that in mind.  

Another limitation is the 180 minute maximum.  Unless you upgrade to the paid version, you are limited to 180 minutes of total time.  So for example, if all your songs are 10 minutes in duration a piece, you are limited to a maximum of 18 files.  No problem... delete a couple older files and you can add a few more.

[video=youtube]

EDIT:  2nd try at getting the video embedded into this post... sorry about that, I did not know how to do it earlier.

 

[Glenn]

Hi Jerry .
You don't have to download the dropbox.com application. I simply use their Web interface. Maybe not as elegant as the app but avoids needing to install anything.

 

[JerryPH]

Hi Glen! Good thinking!

I made it a habit to install because I could just dump files (mostly client photos) in there on my laptop and not need an internet connection (for example, sending emails and setting up photos while flying). It would automatically sync as soon as it connected to any ISP without further prompting. Same goes for deleting files, if it was removed from the PUBLIC folder, it was rendered unavailable, no need to log in, and the operation was completed as soon as I connected.

But yes, of course, for like 99% of the people the web interface is good enough.

 

[Meerkatdawg]

I've found Soundcloud very easy to use. As a total newb to recording and the likes, I just wanted to record my progress and with little kit, I found an excellent app recorder for my phone. Audiocopy. Great for recording on the fly with a basic editor and it's set up to send directly to soundcloud. A handy option if you want to go mobile. You can even upgrade your microphone capabilities with a mobile plug in mic.

 

[Keymn]

I have discovered
BandLab
https://www.bandlab.com
Yes there is mostly hip hop and looping artists, but I have putting my material on there. You can even add tracks to others if requested. They bought out Cakewalk. They offered Cakewalk free as a startup bonus.

 

[Geronimo]

YouTube: sound quality is worse and you have to post a video so more memory is needed and (worse still in my case) people can see what you look like.  If you are sensitiive bear in mind that some people may dislike your video, in my case a very reasonable reaction.  It is completely free which is great.  If you are better looking and a better player than me you may have a tiny chance to go viral.

Youtube has a deal with most music rightsholders, and much music is copyrighted in some manner.  You cannot (I think) monetize on those, but if you declare your sources, chances are that you are sort-of fine for playing existing stuff.

With regard to good looking: I have the not uncommon affliction of musicians face.  I can either look nice or play.  It turns out that a faceless video (like ) is still usually appreciated better than a static nice picture.  Makes editing harder, though.

Finally the penny just dropped that you can just attach an mp3 to your post.  This is quite attractive to me as a way of sharing a recording with the forum e.g. for comments.  This is what I plan to do with some stuff I am working on now.

One reason I rarely do that is that so little music is free from the rights of others.  I dont want to get the people running a little board like this into trouble: linking to Youtube means that the trouble, if any, is with me and Youtube.

 

[losthobos]

Nice to see you relaxed and back on form Jerry.... Keep em coming..

 

[Eddy Yates]

Nice to see you relaxed and back on form Jerry.... Keep em coming..

Absolutely! Very helpful stuff.
I do use Dropbox, because I have an account that I use for all my music partners. You CAN save all of your Dropbox files on your computer as well as have them available as a link in the app. There are different pay levels of storage, and even the free one is useful.

 

[jimgansett]

I also use Dropbox and Youtube depending on what my goal is. If I am putting club meetings (MAAA) up or video of the New England Digital Accordion Orchestra I use YouTube, leave it marked as public, and people can find it in a search, allowing for a great many views. As for Dropbox, I mainly use it for files I want to share, doing it there is quite easy and I like that you can make it as private as you want. The one I don't use is Facebook. Not all people have a facebook account, it drives me nuts when an organization, for instance, our local senior center, posts things there, not considering not everyone has an account or wants want, due to privacy concerns.

 

[Frank Fusari]

I'll just throw in a bit of info on Youtube, which I have been using to share my accordion music for over a year now.

Youtube has a great policy and system in place for musicians who cover other people's music: you are welcome to upload any song you like! If it is copyrighted Youtube automatically detects it and sends you and email notifying you and informs you that ads may appear on your video. If you have a popular channel with more than 1000 subscribers Youtube allows you to 'monetize' your channel, meaning that for your original content you will collect the ad revenue, or share ad revenue with the copyright holder of a song you have played. What's great about it is that you can just put your cover tunes up and you don't have to worry about it or do anything. I think it's a great way to do it.

As for the audio quality, when I compare my original WAVs to the Youtube video, there is what I would call a slight drop in quality. Not too much though, and 99% of people aren't listening with HiFi equipment anyway so it really doesn't matter too much, Youtube's audio is still very high fidelity.

Another great option in Youtube is that any video you put up can be public, private or unlisted. Which means if you don't want to 'share your music with the world', you don't have to. You can just mark everything private and treat it like an online storage folder for your music. It's all there and anytime you want to access it, there it is, or if you want to share something you can just email them the link.

 

[Frank Fusari]

I just realized this thread was started in 2016 haha