Wednesday, March 21, 2012


Hi Jerry here is a revised version, you will have to do some line spacing as it was copy/pasted, it would be an honour to have it posted on to your site, thanks very much for this opportunity, this will be great for me as evidence of my college module, Please let me know when you have posted it so I can take a look, kind regards Pete.


Peter Keogh-Music producer

You Tube & Soundcloud review from a musician’s perspective

Anyone interested in social media nowadays should look no further than the likes of you tube and Soundcloud, the difference between the two is that youtube combines both music and video where as souldcloud is solely focused on audio only.

For the more serious musician soundcloud stands out, they both have sharing capabilities which pretty much anyone will want to use if one wants to promote their music via other social networking sites.

Soundcloud in general is more geared towards unsigned bands and artists alike but not solely as there are obviously established bands and artist on there to.

Should a band or artist have visuals to their music video then YouTube is the site for this.
Before YouTube was established in February in 2005 the main music site for musicians was MySpace and although popular at the time it didn’t have the easy sharing options that YouTube and soundcloud has and indeed it was these sites that started the revolution for sharing ones endeavours, to social networking sites such as facebook and twitter to mention a few.

Soundcloud was established a little later in 2007 by Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss and as sound technicians spotted a gap in the market, they recognized the need for more correspondence between musicians and the need for online collaborations and feedback.
Where soundcloud stand out over you tube is the ability to connect with record labels and as soundcloud has many record labels who have pages on the site, there is a system called drop box which is basically a much easier way of sending demo’s, in short instead of going through the laborious process of posting CD’s and mailing them to countless labels all you have to do should you have an account is simply share the track in question through the drop box of the company you are targeting.

As there two sites took a hold it was MySpace that was left behind and I suspect that people who use MySpace nowadays do it for nothing more than a web page for reference to their band pics and tracks but not so much for the sharing side of things.

So one of the advantages of using YouTube is that it is cheap and easy to upload media data, it also give the user a few thumbnail pictures to review from the uploaded media itself so if the user was not happy with the first frame of the video on view then they have the option of choosing between a few different snapshots of that video to make it more astatically pleasing to the viewer.

Youtube is also excellent for video tutorials on a wide variety of subjects and I myself have on more than one occasion used it for this purpose.
For those who just want to browse music videos and generally browse then there simply isn’t a better place to be than you tube.
Becoming a member is relatively easy to and there is no fuss associated to being a subscriber, speaking of subscribing this is exactly one of the great features of you tube and its is simply just the click on the subscribe tab to keep you up to date with whoever you have subscribed to and indeed you will also have the option of receiving up to date news on progress of who you have subscribed to, of course this works both ways and should someone subscribe you your channel they too will also get updates on any of your recent video uploads.

The soundcloud subscribing option is called following but is basically the same thing and pretty much does the same thing as you tube but obviously just audio only.
Anyway back to YouTube, this has started to spread its wings over the last few years and one of the newest endeavors it is branching into is the gaming console market, the marketing guys at YouTube are doing a great job and have recognized the capacity to expand into this vast market, indeed the gaming market has for the last 5 years outstripped the revenue earned from the film industry so as such YouTube now have their browser on both the Play station and Xbox 360 Consoles.
For self prompting and marketing one’s own media projects you tube is by far the best platform to go about this and has the capacity of reaching a worldwide audience, it should be noted that you tube has made stars from relatively unknown people from musicians, artists and comedians alike with some getting hits in excess of 50 million views.
Another advantage from YouTube is the ability to earn money from advertising revenue, you tube has been quick to recognize this and for the last few years has been offering the subscriber the option of earning through this method by placing adds onto the subscribers videos, obviously the more hits you get the more money can be earned, I daren’t say this amount could be substantial if you were to get a couple of million hits to your video.

As of yet soundcloud offers no earning capacity in the sense of earning through advertising but I suspect they too will latch on to the idea at some point, I think at the present time the soundcloud guys want to stay solely focused on music being from musical themselves, but who knows what the future holds with regard to this aspect or earnings through advertising.
As of all sites one has to be aware there is the capacity for offending material, should a child have unregulated access this could be a problem but this should more be focused towards the parent to regulate what the child sees and for them to make sure they don’t let underage children browse through their profiles but instead set one up for them and thus YouTube themselves will sensor material depending on what age the subscriber is.
If one is sensitive to copywrite issues then this is where one of the biggest cons with youtube can be, obviously you tube stipulates copywrite laws that every subscribes has to sign up to but this will not stop dishonest people from ripping videos for their own use so it is strongly recommended that any material uploaded be already copywrited beforehand.
It also has to be said that if you yourself use copywrited material and re-upload that same material from the source your account could likely be suspended or even permanently banned from infringement of copywrite laws, you may even be prosecuted, certain companies security code their videos such as the BBC and it is these type of media that will be recognized by you tube and flagged straight away or over the coming days.
Although YouTube is massively popular there are a few alternative Video hosting sites such as Vimeo and a few more I could mention but these remain relatively small in comparison and offer less than its more established big brother.

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