[nchase]

Similar problem, different platform: every time I post music on Soundcloud I get likes and comments from bots that want me to pay for reposts.

They seem to have a huge problem at SC and it’s not clear to me that they have any reason to try to stop it. I have been reporting this behavior for years and from my perspective it hasn’t gotten any better.

I have no evidence for this but it feels like Soundcloud is on life support and they have zero or near-zero developers working on it.

[Cthulhu_]

I for one believe a lot of services - also e.g. Twitter, Youtube, etc - don't do much about the bots because they earn revenue from it. Twitter doesn't care if an ad impression is from a bot, they will get paid for it anyway - until the advertisers decide to pull out of course. I'm sure they are constantly trying to walk the line between too many and not enough bot activity.

I mean with email, spambots are always a net negative because the services that pass e-mails through do not get paid for them. But Twitter does. If you get a bot tweet on your feed, or a bot-promoted one, you engage with it and Twitter gets paid (in 'engagement', the magical currency).

[jjoonathan]

Could be, but big sites are always more able to ignore fraud than I'd hope.

eBay has a "compromised account monetization" bot that has used the exact same distinctive fraudulent listings weekly for years and they still use a manual process to deal with it.

[motohagiography]

I chose bandcamp over soundcloud because I don't have face tattoos, but that kind of judginess really just covers for risk aversion and perfectionistic failure chasing. I may switch based on the rationale that a product is only as good as it needs to be and crapiness that persists can be a leading indicator of growth. While bandcamp is earnest and comfortable for the kind of stuff I do (just a place to share with friends), it may be a bit too cool for school if I actually ended up producing something people want.

Soundcloud really looked like they were growing faster than their ability to handle it. Thinking it may actually be the smarter play.

[dyeje]

They are entirely different products. Bandcamp is a digital storefront and SoundCloud is audio social media.

On a related note, their business models are completely different. Bandcamp is bootstrapped and profitable, while SoundCloud is dependent on investment money and almost went bankrupt a few years ago.

[motohagiography]

> They are entirely different products.

Well, if you have to say it...

Was going through both of them again, and curation-wise, they're both landfills. At least on bandcamp I can search for genre/city, but for say, electronic music, you have to sift through stuff that is literally disgusting to find the gems. It's when they mix things that aren't meant to be mixed, they create that kind of dread. Good for bandcamp being profitable though, that's very good news. I'm probably just not their target market.

[goblin89]

Bandcamp is a way to enable your existing fans to support you. They don’t really have the popularity contest or “discovery mechanisms” over there.

Soundcloud is a radio and Bandcamp is a CD shop, if you like a retro metaphor. One is Instagram, the other is Shopify. Apples and oranges. Find new fans through Soundcloud and Spotify, sell your work through Bandcamp.

[maxbendick]

With regards to SoundCloud's future, their revenue is growing, they're profitable, and they've recently raised. I'm also one of the developers working on it. Can't speak to fraud as it's not my area + NDA, but earnestly, thank you for reporting what you see.

Source: https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/soundcloud-revenues-s....

[nchase]

Interesting! Sounds like the company is doing pretty well, that's nice to hear. I'm a fan of it, just wish there were fewer bots. Thanks for your work, whatever you're doing there :)

[P_I_Staker]

> I have no evidence for this but it feels like Soundcloud is on life support and they have zero or near-zero developers working on it.

Well they have been teetering on the brink of collapse for a long time, so no, I wouldn't expect them to have tons of resources. I'm surprised they're still around to be honest.