#8: Tracy — SoundCloud, Music, Community
"When things get so personalized, I can't tell you about a thing that will light you up and get you excited too." Let's fix that, mkay?
Meet the secret agents of taste. Learn what lights them up, where they find inspiration, and what they think we all should be enjoying right now. This edition: Tracy Chan, who’s worked at just about every large music platform and gives me an insider’s tour of SoundCloud.
“You’re not strangers if you like the same band.” “Music sounds better with you.” These phrases are near and dear to my heart because music is my life’s great connective tissue.
That’s why I knew I had to talk to Tracy P. Chan, SVP of Creators at SoundCloud, about his work over there and how to make sense of a platform with over 40 million creators and 320 million tracks. (Tracy’s also had product roles at Twitch, Spotify, and YouTube so he knows a thing or two about wrangling massive digital catalogs.)
It’s not just about finding the needles in the haystack though. Tracy says it’s critical to humanize the act of music discovery and help musicians connect with fans in meaningful ways.
“Artists really deserve to get human feedback in return for all the love and creativity they put into their art,” he says. “Quite frankly, none of the music services except for SoundCloud let that happen.”
I loved getting a personal tour of how to leverage SoundCloud and a really important reminder not to let shared cultural moments go extinct.
Do you consider yourself a tastemaker?
Honestly, no. While I love music, I don't necessarily consider myself to have “good” taste in music. I like what I like. I am one of those oddballs who like different genres. I love pop music. I love dance music. I love country music. I'm all over the place.
But you've worked at all of these huge music providers. How do you discover new music that you like?
I work at SoundCloud, and I've worked at Spotify, and I actually use both for music discovery, in different ways. Most people who use SoundCloud actually use another music service as well because just the value proposition in the catalogs is so different.
On SoundCloud, there's kind of two main ways that I discover music: One, I tend to follow the artists and DJs that I love, and with our feed feature, I see what they're listening to as they repost things.
The second way that I listened to music on SoundCloud is we have an algorithmic discovery playlist called “Daily Drops.”
Every day we drop what's new to you. SoundCloud’s catalog is about 320 million tracks. We have three times the number of tracks that the other DSPs [Digital Service Providers] have. You’ll find all this content that just doesn't exist anywhere else. Just like with other services, the more you listen, the more that you engage and comment, then the better the algorithms become on recommending tracks to you.
On Spotify, I listen to Release Radar and Discover Weekly, but I also listen to New Music Friday because I do think it's important to know what's resonating in the culture.
When you find something that resonates with you, what do you do with it?
If you look at my Twitter feed, it's all songs that I like. I take the step of tagging the artist, because these artists don't get a lot of human feedback, so I know they really appreciate when they get tagged. I also create monthly playlists that are private to me, for offline listening.
OK, so someone is totally new to SoundCloud. How would you recommend that they optimize their listening experience for maximum discovery of cool new things?
The first thing that I would say is: If you are a leanback listener, and just want to put on some tunes and walk away, SoundCloud is probably not the place for you.
To get things going, go find artists that you really like and listen to their songs. You might actually find some of their original tracks and DJ sets on SoundCloud. A lot of the content that’s on SoundCloud is uploaded directly by the artists and DJs; it doesn't go through the supply chain process and all that stuff.
You'll find content that you've probably never heard before. It also helps our systems understand what your taste profiles are. If you follow the artist, they're often amplifying other stuff that they're listening to, which can take you down a path of having the system understand what you love and what types of artists resonate with you.
Which creators on SoundCloud do you wish more people knew about?
The beauty of SoundCloud is that all artists use it in just slightly different ways depending on where they are in their careers. If you’re just getting started, you might create private links and send them to your friends. Once you get some confidence, you might make the track public and start to gain an audience and interact with people. We have the tools to monetize the content and distributed it to Spotify and TikTok. That’s a non-answer because I love them all. [Laughs}
🎧 Tep No is an electro-pop/downtempo chill artist who’s really great.
🎧 ARMNHMR is another good one.
(For more, see what Tracy is reposting on his SoundCloud account.)
What else do you find inspiring?
What I love is when people kind of do new things — new sounds or taking chord progressions and doing something funky with them…like dance plus country.
🎶 Cheat Codes has a whole album of them plus a country star, and it works so well! It’s the melodic progressions of dance music plus the storytelling of country music. Taking those risks is really inspiring to me.
I love people who use tools in exciting ways. For example, we've had comments since the beginning of SoundCloud, but artists have used them in interesting ways — like for AMAs on a track. People will ask the artist obvious things, like: “What's the inspiration of the song?” But they’ll also ask: “What did you have for dinner last night? How do I get to know you as a person?” There's really no good place to do that.
I've worked in music streaming for a bit now and the thing that I always worry about is: Do we have these shared cultural moments? Because when things get so personalized, I can't tell you about a thing that will light you up and get you excited too. What this corner of the internet enables is small pockets of communities to be able to have that shared cultural moment.
Alright, Tracy, what are some other things we should all read, watch, eat, or do? I think you got married at The Progress so I know you have good taste in food!
🥑 La Fonda Restaurant, Redwood City, CA
It was my husband's birthday and we went to this Oaxacan restaurant, which was fantastic. It was like, “Oh! That’s how mole is supposed to taste.”
📕“All Kinds of Families” by Suzanne Lang
A kids’ book that’s super cute because it shows the diversity of different types of families.
📗 “Paper Dolls” by Julia Donaldson
It’s about helping children learn about loss and the importance of forming good memories. It's super sweet.
I am obsessed with this case — and hooked on this podcast.
📺 “The Last of Us”
The HBO show! I did not play the game, but I knew of it because I worked at Twitch.
🎶 Beyoncé “Renaissance”
Such an incredible album. Beyonce put in the work, and it hits so many elements of dance. It pays tribute to the Black cultural heroes who made dance music possible.
Mia’s Queue is a free newsletter featuring an ordinary person with extraordinary taste. Subscribe to get posts like this in your inbox every other Thursday.
In case you haven’t noticed, I love people with good taste! In fact, I have a podcast about it for Flipboard. Check it out!
More Mia’s Queue: Theresa • Vasha • Eva • Sarah • James • Adi • Letitia