Official FM has been around for awhile, and soundcloud has more or less ruled the roost when it comes to sharing and promotion of tracks. Up until now, Official FM worked similarly to SC, upload your music - it`s searchable, you can embed and share and people can download. But as of last week, that all changed.
It`s positioning itself away from something where the public can search for tracks to being a promotional tool for artist, labels and collectives. Everything you can do before with Official FM before still happens but. The embed player links to 5 sites of your choice - your own blog, facebook, twitter.. whatever. It means your music and your links are shared at the same time. You get full info on where your music was downloaded from - the location and the website - set an email-swap-for-downloads option on any track. You`re also as a free user, get to upload 1000 tracks.
YES. 1000.
It works out that you can have 10 "projects" with a 100 tracks in each. So if you have a solo project alongside a band, or an alter ego... it can all be managed from the same account ... and it will only show the "acts" name .. not the `account holder`. Oh and bands can share logins too, so everyone can check stats etc.
You can also create a "page" for each track, so when you launch your music, you give that link, and you can control how people see it. you don`t have to, but you can.
You can create playlists too, so if it`s an E.P or an album you`ve got to share - you can do it, with your own artwork too. Just about everything a soundcloud Pro account does, FM are doing for nothing. Hmm.
Now, you can`t search for tracks by other people - it isn`t meant to be a place to find music - but that MAY change, FM won`t say more than that.
I`ve signed up (again! - your old FM account details do not work)So far I like what I see, Will I drop SC? No, there`s a community around SC that`s not going away soon, but now I have options.
what`s interesting to note is they have four categories for music uploads
Orginal
Remix
Mashup
Mixtape.
So they are positioning themselves not only to musicians but to DJ`s too ... Interesting indeed. You also have the option of when you upload a track it will automatically upload it to your Youtube and Soundcloud account simultaenously. Tried that too. Worked without a hitch. All wrapped up in lovely HTML5. I`ve embedded three tracks on my music page, you don`t have to have it like I have, but as i`m photographer and usually photograph people I work with - having my player as large as that suits me fine. (you can choose from three different types)
There`s more stuff to know, but you`ll have to find out by going to their NEW website.
Between this, soundcloud and Bandcamp.. I`m well happy. Thank you official FM.
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