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Comment by alsetmusic | Hacker News Reader

> Purists will probably complain about the audio being modified.

As a SoundCloud user, I would argue that a great number of the target audience (musicians) would be turned off by having a carefully crafted mix altered. Anyone who has spent large amounts of money on the tools of their trade has an investment in achieving a particular result from their hard work. The listener is (IMO) secondary to the artist in this case.

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Then give the artist tools to fit a normalized audio experience, or build a business that doesn't need listeners.

"The customer is secondary to the manufacturer".

Good luck with that.

I have always viewed musicians as SoundCloud's primary customers. That's who brings listeners. The site is built first for hosting, second for streaming. The streaming audience is a consequence of artist utilizing the platform.

I would revert to hosting my music only on my own sites if I learned that SC was altering my audio.

Edit: imagine if github altered code when hosting public repositories.

The problem is simple enough that it could be solved client side, with some precomputed metadata from the server (an 8-bit integer for e.g. ReplayGain). That could be implemented as a little checkbox that twiddles the volume control from JS

thats fair but I always found soundcloud's stream compression to be pretty bad. I think maybe it got better recently but there was a long time where it sounded like ~128kbps or less, particularly on stuff with cymbals, etc

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