@rrhoover This is so helpful! I'm still waiting for a true recommendation system ala Spotify on steroids. I liked about 2,500 tracks, there should be a way to push me a suggested playlist (without limits), an offline mode (premium anyone?). So much potential there...

@rrhoover Holy cow, good call on the Plug app! Was not aware of it. Saves me from searching through my tabs to see which one is playing music :) One note on the Soundcloud charts. They've had it there for a long time now. What I've noticed though is that it doesn't have as quick a turnover as HypeMachine. I definitely turn to it occasionally though when HypeMachine is having an off day! This feature also used to be called "Browse" so I guess they've cemented it as a leaderboard.

@rrhoover Wait, isn't this just a rebranded Explore? Is there any new functionality?

@tokudu I'm not 100% familiar with what Explore did but it's my understanding that it's a reimagining.

@rrhoover Yeah so it seems. It really saddens me that there is still no "Recommended" tab right beside Stream and Charts.

@bentossell @rrhoover I agree that it does do a good job with regard to the discovery factor, and I think that the filters are useful. But as always, unfortunately I don't think it solves what I've always seen as SoundCloud's biggest problem: that there is so much junk floating around in between great material. I've tried a number of mix-n-matches (Alt. Rock under "New & Hot", then under "Top 50", then a few other genres, etc.) and found it more difficult than I would like to have to weed through the stuff that isn't totally serious to get to the material that is meant in a serious way. Perhaps that's just me, but I'm irked by the fact that there's no real measure or standard for material quality on SC. It creates an endless ocean of stuff, where the experience is hit or miss imo. Then again, to each their own. This feature in and of itself is pretty well done. I just wish SC would solve what I see as the bigger issue at play.

@adammarx13 @rrhoover yeh that is for soundcloud to figure out. I take the path of least resistance and just let things play through. You're more of a music aficionado than me though ;)

@bentossell @rrhoover Ha, well like I said, to each their own :) My main point in the grand scheme was that there is still ample space for SC, or any other new service, to solve such problems. You actually help exemplify a great point: every music fan and/or listener is different, and because music is highly personal to the user, there is a huge amount of opportunity to any such service to capture its particular demographic of fans and capitalize on those people. There will not be just one or two (or five) music services; there will be many (just look at all the cloud services out there). Some like the path of least resistance while others (like me ;p ) are stubborn problem children and much harder to please haha.

@p_ngu here's the top 50 mixtapes ;) https://soundcloud.com/consolefm...

@p_ngu thanks! When Beatport folded, we shut down for a long time and settled on Soundcloud as the new source for quality indie music. At the time they didn't have charts! You can see all the genres and such we track now https://soundcloud.com/consolefm Unfortunately the genre data is still quite bad. Soundcloud, however, employs some fine machine learning engineers. I'm putting my faith in them to better track the genres and more obscure sub-genres.