Reposts? They are currently my #1 annoyance on soundcloud.
I'm following 300+ artists and they increased my stream's size by at least 4x.
It's not about "finding, sharing and curating" but to spam your stream with duplicate tracks.
Imagine an artist reposting his own tracks. Then his network does. As does his label. And his friend. And then all of them repost a playlist with this track on it. Yay!
Agreed, and the solution is painfully obvious: Show the item once in the feed and just let me know that "DJ Joe Doe, Awesome Records, [guy who is in my network] and 27 other people reposted this."
Come to think about it, isn't that how most other social feeds handle this problem?
Facebook has been doing this for years and it works great. The duplicated content is shown once, and then the separate comment feeds from the different reposts (if there are any) are put below it. Soundcloud wouldn't even have to innovate here; they just need to copy what's already working elsewhere.
Not having duplication is better for revenue because having duplicate content fill up your feed because lots of your friends re-shared something is bad UI. I'm not really that much more likely to click on something after the first time I'm shown something, and I start to get actively pissed off at it after a few unnecessary repetitions (this was a big complaint about the spam coming from Facebook games in the early days). Spamming up the feed with duplicate content means that for the same time spent browsing, someone sees fewer pieces of original content, meaning their average click rate is less, and yes, that costs revenue.
But fundamentally duplication costs revenue because it's a bad UI and bad UIs piss off users, leading them to use your product less.
I follow 2,000 on soundcloud and wish I could follow more (there is a limit currently). I agree that the way reposts are shared on timelines is annoying in the sense that it is inadequate. Obviously the user needs the ability to filter reposts and just see tracks posted by artists (not currently possible). But I also follow people because I know they repost quality content from obscure artists. That's the main way to discover content on soundcloud right now, and it seems completely broken, both for the person doing the discovering, and the person being discovered.
Keep in mind I am primarily interested in DJ-oriented music, which is not music designed to be listened to beginning-to-end, but rather mixed and beat-matched with other music. You can often get the gist of a beat and rhythm in a matter of bars. I'll usually click around a track for 5-10s before I repost it, and move on to the next track. When I'm ready to actually listen, I go back to my profile and play back everything I've reposted for the day, and unpost the stuff that doesn't stand for the full length of the track.
Wouldn't it be better to 'like' tracks as a bookmarking mechanism, then repost when you go back to listen. That's how I do it and that way I'm not filling my followers feeds with stuff I haven't even listened to.
Exactly. And those creating content are the ones who fork out for a paid account. It wasn't designed for 'curators' because they add nothing but noise to the ecosystem.
In one regard, I think it's really cool to be able to follow artists and put together a public playlist for others to be interested in. That's neat. If it's more for recognition and trying to be a sort-of icon for 'picking out great tunes' then I don't think they add much - as in, established music review sites do a pretty good job still of curating and reviewing. SoundCloud isn't really a review platform per se.
Vine seems to have the same problem. Most regular people only occasionally post an original Vine, but if you want to see those, you have to scroll through tons of their reposts first.
It's not about "finding, sharing and curating" but to spam your stream with duplicate tracks.
Imagine an artist reposting his own tracks. Then his network does. As does his label. And his friend. And then all of them repost a playlist with this track on it. Yay!
Please give us an option to hide them...