SoundCloud, the user-driven sound discovery platform, has a brand new feature debuting today to help users discover new music based on their tastes. The idea behind the feature, which the company calls The Upload, isn’t necessarily new, but SoundCloud’s feature is a bit different from others in at least one way that is truly unique.
Like most of the competitor’s services, The Upload does start by basing its suggestions for new music and artists on the music users are listening to regularly. It also uses machine learning to generate those suggestions. Although the announcement doesn’t go into too much detail, it’s probably safe to say that task is completed by the artificial intelligence through a combination of user feedback and an examination of both listening history and musical tastes. That is, of course, not entirely a new idea either. Most competitors also have similar suggestion-generation features that use either complex algorithms or some form of A.I. to generate suggestions. However, The Upload takes advantage of the way SoundCloud interacts with artists and users to add yet another twist. In addition to the suggestions changing on a daily basis as your listening profile builds up, and because new sounds are uploaded on a very frequent basis, those suggestions will only include the “freshest” new music. What that means, according to the announcement from the company, is that the music being put up for a user’s consideration will most often only have just been uploaded to the site “within the last few days.”
Finding the new discovery feature could probably stand to be a bit more intuitive since it is currently accessed through an entirely different section of the web application than on the Android version. While users on the web will need to access the “discovery tab” to find The Upload, Android users will find the new feature under the search section of the app. As with similar features found in other apps, SoundCloud also says that it will get better the more often it’s used. Unfortunately, that means it probably won’t be providing perfect suggestions every time from the very start but that those suggestions will improve over time. That aside, the idea behind SoundCloud’s latest innovation is definitely an interesting twist because it focuses on helping users discover music that’s actually new – as opposed to just being new to the user.
