SoundCloud makes it easy for audio creators to collaborate in new ways and across geographical borders. It can be used from the initial stages of sharing a demo, to getting feedback, to tweaking ideas and producing a collaborative piece of music.

Before You Start

Here’s a step-by-step guide on using the site to create a sound with others. Let’s say you have the original demo you want to share to the rest of your band…

Audio Storage

The first step is to set up a platform to then discuss and develop the original sound. You probably don’t want your demo out there for the whole world to see so remember to set the sound to private. The best way to do this is create one set where ideas can be built on top of each other. When creating the set, go to the privacy settings and select the set to be private. All the sounds now added to this set will be private too.

To allow for interaction it is great to have all of your collaborators set up with SoundCloud and to follow each other on the Cloud. Once you are following your fellow collaborators you can invite them individually into the set via the privacy options.

Private Sharing

Now you are all set up, every time you want to put up a new set on SoundCloud to collaborate over you can quickly select who gets access via the ‘Add/Remove People’ option in the Private bar in the edit of a sound.

Use the following/followers tab and click on the individuals you wish to grant access. You can even use the ‘Lists’ tab to create a contact list for your band. For more information on private sharing check out this blog post.

Timed Comments

Once you have shared a sound you of course want to gain opinions and feedback. The timed comments option on SoundCloud works well to pinpoint an area for discussion around a sound. Say you don’t like a certain drum fill in the song, anyone who is invited can leave a comment.

From here you can build up a conversation based around this pinpointed section of a song by replying to this timed comment. A great point of interaction arises from here to allow to collaboration and discussion from the the most minute to the most obtuse opinion of a sound.

Advanced Privacy Settings

De­pending on how much you want to share with the others, you can make the comments public to all the collaborators or just to yourself. By going into the edit of a sound set you can go down to ‘Advanced Privacy Settings’ and ‘Hide Comments’ or ‘Make Comments Private’.

So you have your first sound up on your privately shared set and everyone is giving their input to the new demo. As an idea grows remember you can add newer versions or ideas to the set. Say for example you have recorded a new idea for a guitar riff, by going to the edit of the set you can continue to add audio sounds to the set, by either clicking on ‘add new sounds’ or ‘add existing sounds’.

Eventually as your song grows you will have a set full of the ideas leading to this point of creation and all the feedback on the sounds. Remember you can change the order of the sounds in a set too, so as some ideas and versions of a song become more finalized in how a sound is progressing you can go into the edit of a track and change accordingly.

Being able to store this information in one place, then comment and collaborate to grow an idea is just one way you can personally use SoundCloud.