The Context of SoundCloud Context

A feature upgrade for reposts

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s a new feature on Soundcloud, the prominent audio streaming and distribution service. Listeners have long been able to “repost” tracks by other users. Now when reposting, they can add a comment. The length is up to 140 characters, same as an old-school tweet, which seems like an esoteric choice, but so be it. Context is always better.

This upgrade correlates with Bandcamp’s long-running feature that let’s a purchaser of a release choose a track and comment on it. Those comments selectively appear on the webpage for the release:

The new SoundCloud repost upgrade also connects to Twitter’s recent tweak that [encourages retweeters to add a comment](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/twitter-is-still-letting-you-retweet-you-don-e2-80-99t-have-to-quote-tweet/ar-BB1agTkB) before posting. Again, context is always better.

There was a time when the soundcloud.com/stream page on was the default for a logged-in user. There’s still a /stream page, but the default is the soundcloud.com/discover page, which is a mess: a few things relating to your own listening, followed by endless generic lists, so bad as to make you miss your algorithmic overlord.

This expansion of the repost feature may be a sign that SoundCloud is re-emphasizing /stream, which shows things have been posted (or reposted) by accounts you follow, in simple, reverse-chronological order. If so, it’d be nice to have a toggle option for reposts, because they can clog up /stream. I’ve unfollowed some repost-heavy accounts.

In addition, SoundCloud has grown over the years. What hasn’t grown is the number of accounts you can follow. The number remains capped at 2,000, which is low. SoundCloud also provides no practical tools to efficiently cull the accounts you do follow (like, say, see who hasn’t posted in x number of years). Any time I want to add a new account (I follow 2,000, and am followed by five times that number), I have to first delete one.

All things said, I do hope people take advantage of the new comment option for reposts of tracks on SoundCloud, to provide some framing context for why they’ve reposted. I also hope the new feature leads some repost-happy accounts to chill out a bit.

Postscript: When I first posted this, I neglected to link to the track depicted up top in the screenshot detail. It is “Fog” by Abstract Machines (aka Andrzej Koper
of Wroclaw, Poland): [soundcloud.com/abstract-machines](https://soundcloud.com/abstract-machines/fog).

조용한

Minding social media

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s always a good day to change your [Twitter](https://twitter.com/disquiet) location to a country where you can’t read the language. Bonus points if it’s an alphabet you find aesthetically pleasing.

I’m riding out the election with my “trends” all in Korean (with the exception of whatever single promoted tweet shows at the top of the list).

Mike Dayton Communes with the Void

On a brand new, five-cut album

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

In these tense times, a lot of time is spent listening to music that offers the psychic equivalent of palliative care (the ambient material that is the main content of this website), or to music that provides pounding catharsis (Fugazi, Metallica, and Karen O’s cover of Led Zeppelin are always at the ready).

And then there is Mike Dayton’s new album, *Exploring the Void*, as exemplified by the wandering, swirling morass of synthesizer motion that is the track “Everything Dies Even the Stars.” It is sound in a constant stage of agitation. It is a portrait of the void from which the album takes its title. Elsewhere on the record, the volume, the intensity, the vivid confusion, takes a less direct approach, as with the ebb and flow of “Refracted Diamonds in the Night Sky,” or the echoing percussive shimmers of “The Barren Ice Planet.” None of this music sounds like it aims to comfort, except to the extent that it does: by providing camaraderie, evidence that someone else is processing the unshareable combination of stress, chaos, and solitude of our historical moment into something that is shareable.

Album originally posted at [mikedayton.bandcamp.com](https://mikedayton.bandcamp.com/album/exploring-the-void) on Halloween 2020. More from Dayton, who is based in Minneapolis, Minnessotta, at [twitter.com/dayton_mike](https://twitter.com/dayton_mike) and [soundcloud.com/mikejdayton](https://soundcloud.com/mikejdayton).

Current Listens: Recent Retrospect

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. In the interest of conversation, let me know what you’re listening to in the comments below. Just please don’t promote your own work (or that of your label/client). This isn’t the right venue. (Just use email.)

I listened to plenty of new music this week, from Autechre’s surprise [*Plus*](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/plus) to Patricia Wolf’s [remix](https://soundcloud.com/scenenoise/premier-fadi-tabbal-the-new-and-improved-guide-to-birdwatching-vol3-patricia-wolf-remix) of material from Fadi Tabbal’s [new album](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/23/tabbal-subject-to-potential-errors/) to ioflow’s [ambient workout](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2XFQtsj4zw) on the Elektron Digitone, but I wanted to highlight in this edition of Current Listens some music I’ve written about over the past month or so that’s really stuck with me. The emphasis on the new can create a false impression of constant new. Even the recent new can linger in ways that change one’s initial impression, often for the better:

▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰

NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases

▰ The patzr radio art-sound podcast of Jimmy Kipple’s musique concrète (music constructed from field recordings and pre-existing recorded sound) is a font of textural pleasure, especially the recent [two-parter](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/12/patzr-radio-202/). Here’s the second half:

▰ Loraine James’ [remix](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/28/loraine-james-lunch-money-life/) of Lunch Money Life’s “Lincoln” reveals key moments of the source material before artfully falling to deliberately challenging pieces.

▰ Lloyd Cole recorded an economical little album of modular synthesizer music with one little noise source, from which the record takes its name, [*Dunst*](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/11/current-listens-johannsson-tribute-coles-synths/), as its focus:

▰ “Suite pour l’invisible” was the first track made available from Ana Roxanne’s forthcoming [*Because of a Flower*](https://disquiet.com/2020/09/09/ana-roxanne-flower-suite/) album. I’ve gone back and listened frequently. It was followed up by the beat-machine-backed, almost Sade-like “Camille.” The [full release](https://anaroxanne.bandcamp.com/album/because-of-a-flower-2), with five additional tracks, comes out on November 13.