Products Used
Tag API
The Challenge
SoundCloud prides itself on having an enormous music catalogue of enormously varied content. And as the home of what’s next in music, the company wanted to ensure it was presenting the freshest music possible to its users.
But with over 100,000 tracks uploaded daily, and minimal context for each track, playlist curation at any kind of scale was impossible to achieve manually. They needed a smarter, faster way to help listeners discover new favourites without needing an army of curators.
The Solution
Part 1: Tagging SoundCloud’s catalogue
Using Musiio Tag, SoundCloud accurately tagged their music catalogue, giving each track context such as genre, mood, energy, BPM and more. With this layer of metadata in place, the catalogue was ready for recontextualisation.
Part 2: Making playlist ‘recipes’
Now that the catalogue was tagged, the Auto Playlisting team came up with scenarios where listeners would want music. They came up with several broad categories including Party, Workout, Chill, Study and more.
For each specific use case, they filtered tracks using the Musiio Tag data to produce dynamic playlists perfect for a wide range of scenarios. These scenarios range from a studying with instrumental lo-fi, to an energetic, techno-fuelled workout, making sure everyone can find something they love, no matter their taste.
Gloria Huan from SoundCloud's Auto Playlisting team explains:
“We have hundreds of millions of tracks on SoundCloud. When creating a fresh playlist, it would be impossible for me to listen to all our tracks and curate playlists with new content and consistent vibes every week. That's where Musiio's tags come in, filtering the breadth of the catalogue. I can sort through genres, easily group songs by their energy levels, and so on. With the help of Musiio tags, I have thousands of variations of playlists created.”
The Result
The result is Discovery Playlists, over 100 dynamic playlists that serve a plethora of use cases and music tastes. And they’ve been a huge success.
Take the popular Techno Chill playlist, for instance. It became a hit almost overnight, perfectly describing and capturing the vibe listeners were looking for. And, because it’s a playlist governed by rules set by the small but expert Auto Playlisting team, it will continue to update as new tracks are added to SoundCloud.
Listeners quickly felt the difference, finding themselves spending more time enjoying fresh, perfectly-picked tunes and less time searching. By giving listeners a new way into the SoundCloud catalogue, the Auto Playlisting project is a powerful demonstration of how companies can create extra value for users once they have accurate tagging in place.
Contact us now to book a demo, or learn more about how automated tagging can help you create new value from your existing music catalogue.
