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Why are Pro accounts so expensive?
The service is interesting enough, but I have a hard time seeing how such a high cost is motivated for the consumer. For sharing tracks and works privately, 15 tracks wouldn't get me very far as most projects contain several which are updated over and over. Having access to gadgets and functions for mass distribution isn't very useful then. Nor is access control features. (I currently use drop.io for this, as it is free, allows for comments, restricted and collaborative access, unlimited number of files and can handle other document formats that are used in conjunction - such as art work drafts and track listings.)
When mass distributing, however, it is different. But not enough to motivate paying that much for mere bandwidth and gadgetry. Perhaps if I'm a musician who already is in high demand and have issues with services such as last.fm. But, if you are like me - an artist who occasionally makes some tracks for game and art projects and likes to share - it's really no use paying as much as nine times the cost of my web host (3GB storage space, no gadgets, gigs and gigs of bandwidth) when there are distribution services such as jamendo.org, last.fm, archive.org and many others. Perhaps I have been spoiled by video services such as vimeo.com which offers 500MB a day - in comparison five tracks a month (with a similar number of listeners as there are video viewers) is really nothing. Also - after two months of uploading, I reach the limit and will never be able to showcase my full 36-track soundtrack unless I commit to pay a monthly bill that is comparable in size to what I pay for electricity or mobile phone traffic per month.
There is probably some business model magic at work here that I'm not aware of which makes these comparisons irrelevant, but this is how it seems from a user perspective. Too bad, as I really like what you do.
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Previously posted in forums: http://soundcloud.com/forums/sc-annou...
When mass distributing, however, it is different. But not enough to motivate paying that much for mere bandwidth and gadgetry. Perhaps if I'm a musician who already is in high demand and have issues with services such as last.fm. But, if you are like me - an artist who occasionally makes some tracks for game and art projects and likes to share - it's really no use paying as much as nine times the cost of my web host (3GB storage space, no gadgets, gigs and gigs of bandwidth) when there are distribution services such as jamendo.org, last.fm, archive.org and many others. Perhaps I have been spoiled by video services such as vimeo.com which offers 500MB a day - in comparison five tracks a month (with a similar number of listeners as there are video viewers) is really nothing. Also - after two months of uploading, I reach the limit and will never be able to showcase my full 36-track soundtrack unless I commit to pay a monthly bill that is comparable in size to what I pay for electricity or mobile phone traffic per month.
There is probably some business model magic at work here that I'm not aware of which makes these comparisons irrelevant, but this is how it seems from a user perspective. Too bad, as I really like what you do.
---
Previously posted in forums: http://soundcloud.com/forums/sc-annou...
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Hi,
SoundCloud is a premium service crafted specifically for dealing with large audio files and the PRO accounts are targeted towards serious musicians and labels. We're aware of that the prices are slightly higher than on some other services out there–but then again there's no service that's on par with what we're doing with audio online. If you're dealing with music on a daily basis our service will save you *hours* of work. So you'll have to value your time when looking at the price.
We're also aware of that our pricing model doesn't cover all cases. Bedroom producers who may have a lot of tracks but aren't prepared to pay the PRO fee will not be able to use SoundCloud to the fullest extent–but we think that's a good tradeoff. After all, 5 tracks a month is more than the total amount of tracks you can put on a MySpace profile!
And we're of course aiming to keep prices reasonable, but since we have no advertising on the site (we love to keep things uncluttered) or other partnerships (yet) we're relying on PRO accounts to cover the costs of storage, streaming, etc. And we like to keep it pretty much that way.
That said I think you have good points about pricing in relation to features, and it might be worth for us to think about ways of modularizing the PRO accounts a bit, so that one could pick a subset of features, package them together and pay much less.
Lastly, I should say that there will be several things happening the coming months that will make the PRO accounts more valuable. This includes versioning, but also more even cooler stuff that I cannot yet talk about...
I’m confident
The company says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?the problem is compounded even more when nobody replies. Maybe it is a magical business model - now watch closely as it disappears!
I’m whatever.
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Inappropriate?Hi,
SoundCloud is a premium service crafted specifically for dealing with large audio files and the PRO accounts are targeted towards serious musicians and labels. We're aware of that the prices are slightly higher than on some other services out there–but then again there's no service that's on par with what we're doing with audio online. If you're dealing with music on a daily basis our service will save you *hours* of work. So you'll have to value your time when looking at the price.
We're also aware of that our pricing model doesn't cover all cases. Bedroom producers who may have a lot of tracks but aren't prepared to pay the PRO fee will not be able to use SoundCloud to the fullest extent–but we think that's a good tradeoff. After all, 5 tracks a month is more than the total amount of tracks you can put on a MySpace profile!
And we're of course aiming to keep prices reasonable, but since we have no advertising on the site (we love to keep things uncluttered) or other partnerships (yet) we're relying on PRO accounts to cover the costs of storage, streaming, etc. And we like to keep it pretty much that way.
That said I think you have good points about pricing in relation to features, and it might be worth for us to think about ways of modularizing the PRO accounts a bit, so that one could pick a subset of features, package them together and pay much less.
Lastly, I should say that there will be several things happening the coming months that will make the PRO accounts more valuable. This includes versioning, but also more even cooler stuff that I cannot yet talk about...
I’m confident
The company says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Hello Eric,
Thank you so much for replying to this thread. I am a paying PRO account holder (a producer who deals with music everyday and is my business). I have a couple questions. What is "Priority Support"? It is listed as a service included with a PRO account.
I am losing time and money (yes, your service costs me about $2.70 a day) by not being able to upload large .wav files. And I was getting no support... I hate to be the one complaining here, or being the squeeky wheel, but I am not complaining about a high price for your service - I'm complaining about the level of support I get with a high-priced PRO account. It should be a lot better than what it is.
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This answers the question
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Very much agree. -
Jason,
David here, I am new to the team and will be spending most of my time helping out our pro users. If you feel like you need direct access, please don't hesitate to send me a direct email to david at soundcloud dot com -
Thanks for the introduction David.
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This reply was removed on 07/09/09.
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