The potential demise of Soundcloud
I'll admit, before I started using iNaturalist for Amphibian Watch I did not know what Soundcloud was. I got a little panicked when I saw this article today.
Anyone else watching this?
I haven't a clue how to save my frog voices any other way. :-/
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This is definitely going to be a problem since all of iNaturalist's sound files are imported via SoundCloud. They will either have to host the sound files themselves or not use sounds as vouchers for observations. It seems bad either way because trying to host tons of sound files will take a lot of space. I actually have a great recording of a Black Rail in a county with zero iNaturalist records but I haven't gotten around to using SoundCloud so this record remains uncaptured by iNaturalist. What do you think @gyrrlfalcon?
I thought it was just me, techno-peasant that I am. I thought there was something else I was missing. This is potentially as bad as I feared.
Yikes! I have my files backed up in iTunes, but this would wreck havoc with quite a few of my entries here. @kueda
@loarie
Has anyone seen any evidence that is anything more than handwaving? I'm inclined to take the word of the folks running the site: https://blog.soundcloud.com/2017/07/14/soundcloud-is-here-to-stay/
Phew!
Firing 170 staff is generally not the sign of a healthy company. This seems like a "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" situation to me.
Okay. I didn't want to cause panic, but thought I should report.
Good news:
http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/08/11/542817301/soundcloud-saved-by-the-bell-of-a-big-chunk-of-financing
Good for now. Better news is that iNaturalist is working on their own integration of uploading sounds.
That is good news. Hurrah! [It needs to be easy for those of us who are techno-peasants. ]
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