It seems that Slipmat is getting competition as one of the big boys, Mixcloud, is joining the live streaming arena.
(Digital DJ Tips touted this as “100% legal” as in some ways other platforms would not be. Slipmat is also 100% legal if you use it that way. The difference is that the copyright mafia takes some of the Mixcloud subscription money totally ignoring the legal regulations in the DJs country. All DJs already pay for their music, some countries just force them to pay several times over for promoting other peoples work. And while you can agree or disagree with the laws, no tool or platform that I know of forces you to ignore them.)
This new Mixcloud offering seems to be at very early stages still. I’d be very interested in hearing the opinions form Slipmat DJs how it works and feels comparing to Slipmat if you are able to check it out
Here’s their help page:
I couldn’t find any live streams or any page that would show even a screenshot of how the events look like.
I’m not sure if you have to have a MixCloud Pro account, but I do so I just clicked on the banner at the top of my page and it took me straight to setting up a stream.
Super simple to copy the server and stream key into OBS, however… their previewer doesn’t work…
And when I tried to go live, no video showed.
They are crawling right now… and their help section has no solutions for the above problems.
They offer overlays for OBS… it’s just a backdrop that you can layer your videos over… meh…
Going live takes 1-2mins (90sec average) before you see highly buffered video. They do not allow you to control buffer size or presence and assume you want this giant multi-second one.
Honestly, for most of their streamers? That’s probably helpful.
I’m a little bit surprised of what I’m seeing here. Based on their other work I would have expected a bit more. This page can literally be set up by one dev in a day.
The problem with super simple and limited listener experience like this is that it’s hard and unlikely to get the listener back to this page. A typical listener is not experienced in technology other than maybe the FB app they found the link from. Nothing here on this page encourages them to interact with the audience or the DJ in a meaningful way. (Imagine the small chat with 100 people trying to say something.) The reason why places like Twitch are so popular is because of the rich interaction possibilities. While I personally couldn’t hate the busy and childish UI of Twitch, it’s clearly liked by millions of users who want to come back show after show because they had good interactions with other people on the platform.
“This is boring” is the worst kind of feeling that your listener can have. The next time they see a link for a live stream show, they’ll think “naeh, just another boring live stream” and won’t click the link. Getting that listener back to your shows is way harder than getting them to click the first link.
I welcome the competition from Mixcloud in the live streaming arena but I wish they would have taken the time to do a better job with their live page. As it currently stands it affects poorly to the whole live streaming community.
That was an interesting video, props for Phil for taking the time to record it.
Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate that Mixcloud is making efforts to stay in the game and the live streaming bit is a natural continuation for their products but as someone who has been actively developing a live streaming platform for four years (and seen many startups come and go during this time), this is not a trivial thing to get right.
Still, having choices is a great thing for us DJs, let’s hope they have the stamina to stay in the game!
I think they are at the classic software 80/20 point here with being about 80% there but problem is the rest of the 20% will take 80% of the total project time to finish up
I’ve got a Mixcloud Pro/Select account (I’ve been paying for it but haven’t used it as my user base seems to be elsewhere) and saw this…from the general feedback it’s still in Beta and laggy/buggy. They’re probably trying to compete with the uptick of DJ’s going on Twitch (and playing a very risky game as their TOC’s strictly state full-on mixes of music you don’t own the rights to is prohibited - and yet) and like you say…it will likely fold after a while.
They’ve half-arsed a lot of projects over the years, but I think they fail to understand that mixcloud has kinda just become a repository for DJ’s to put their mixes. I rarely have club-goers asking me for my mixcloud (they still ask for soundcloud or instagram etc).
Anyway, I’m rambling. I’ve got access to it, so I’ll be going in and seeing how it all works
I’m from Germany. We have this thing called “Gema” which has been a PITA for DJs ever since. Back in the 90s there was shortly some rumble that DJs would have to pay for played tracks every night out - but in the end there started a licensing where the bars & clubs would pay a certain fee.
And now streaming - these organizations are so dusty and rusty and do not keep up with today’s needs, it’s really sad.
But given the current situation, I guess there will be some solutions soon.
The organizations guarding this cartell of rights management need to be dragged to this century kicking and screaming and I’m afraid it will take a lot more than few months of spotty live streams on big platforms to get them evento think about change.
This is also why I think it’s important us DJs are actively lobbying for the change instead of just going along with every insane thing they try to force on the world.
I think if enough people find “cheap” way to get around the rules (such as a Finnish “radio station”) they’ll soon realise they’re missing out on income.
So far so good… I still like the interactive-ness of when going live on FB. I think last I heard you can now get a copy of your mix… an audio copy that is. Everything is still on beta so I’m excited where the experience goes.
Started using Mixcloud recently as fb kept muting my stream, seems ok but it isn’t good for your listeners as they need to log in to make comments and the interaction is therefore not great. I have had slow laggy video issues as well which you can only seem to resolve by restarting !!
Looking for a much better way to stream…
I had my first experience streaming on Mixcloud last week. The streaming wasn’t as smooth as compared to twitch. Will stream on Mixclould again this coming weekend with some different settings. Hope it goes well…
