For the last few years I have used Youtube as a resource to share my music. I made this choice because I figured that Youtube has a larger audience than soundcloud does. It's also very easy to use youtube to share your music on facebook and other websites. However, the more familiar I become with the online music community, the more I am seeing soundcloud utilized. So the question I'm throwing out to you is which do you prefer and why? If there are any advantages to one over the other then what are they?

I prefer Soundcloud because:

1) I can take the finished audio (as-is) and upload it then share it to my various outlets instead of having to make a video of a song to share on Youtube.

2) Soundcloud allows for timed comments which can lead to some interesting discussion instead of just general comments.

3) Soundcloud seems more focused on the content whereas Youtube comments generally tend to get off topic pretty fast.

4) Soundcloud offers a ton of widgets that can work embedded or with a wide variety of sites. Youtube doesn't have that same approach - at least not with mobile platforms.

I also prefer SoundCloud because:

1) Everything Nate's said.

2) I see only what I want to see on SoundCloud, and not a whole array of unrelated 'Related Videos' like on YouTube.

3) People I refer to my SoundCloud or a song on my SoundCloud only see what I want them to see, and not a whole array of unrelated 'Related Videos' like on YouTube.

4) The musician/composer to casual ratio is much higher than on YouTube, so it's easier to connect with fellow musicians/composers and give/receive feedback to/from them.

5) YouTube is all about videos, while SoundCloud is all about sound, so in that sense I find using SoundCloud to showcase my music a lot more appropriate.

Hello,

SoundCloud!

For all the reasons Nate and Christian gave... can't add much to that!

Cheers,
Moritz

Well...I've jumped onto the soundcloud bandwagon! Working on getting my tracks up there and switching my website over from youtube to soundcloud links.

Soundcloud, definitely. Beside what everyone above stated I feel it's easy to customize the player for your personal website as well, which personally allows for a much better experience than the default player tied to my webhost.

Im with soundcloud gang, I dont like the compression rates on youtube videos and I like that I can upload wavs straight to soundcloud