SoundCloud vs. Allears: What's the difference?

Audio is on the rise, and it’s a key component to growing your blog’s audience with a whole new method of engagement.

If you’re thinking about riding the wave, you might be at the crossroads of choosing the right platform.

While audio hosting comes in many shapes and sizes, certain platforms cater to certain trades.

Choosing the right one means you get the maximum bang for your buck – and it means that you can position your content to find the most ears.

If you’re considering SoundCloud or Allears, here are some of the pros and cons of each.

When to Use SoundCloud

If you’re part of the world’s next best band or an independent artist seeking new audiences, SoundCloud has some advantages you’ll want to noodle on.

Who is SoundCloud for?

SoundCloud was originally built to serve musicians and independent artists. While its user base has slowly expanded to include podcasters, influencers and bloggers looking to host their online audio content, the platform was engineered specifically with music discovery in mind.

What are the advantages of using SoundCloud?

When you upload your music (or other forms of audio content) to SoundCloud, the platform provides its own version of a social media network meant to help distribute your work and get it in front of new audiences.

As an artist, you can post your own recordings, comment on others and virtually ‘network’ to try and engage more fans.

As a listener, you can access SoundCloud content for free through the SoundCloud site or through an embedded audio player on different web pages.

It’s a massive platform that’s been around for a while, so you can largely put your mind at ease around things like bugs, bad updates, or losing listeners to a poor user experience.

It’s also worth noting that SoundCloud’s embedded use of a bright orange color palette and album art thumbnails can take center stage on a web page, potentially distracting users from any content you pair it with.

What kind of analytics does SoundCloud provide?          

SoundCloud’s analytics platform is structured with song recordings in mind, allowing you to see overall numbers of plays, likes, comments, reposts, and downloads.

You can see day-by-day breakdowns of your content’s performance and explore the profiles of your listeners with SoundCloud accounts.

How much does SoundCloud cost for hosting?

If SoundCloud sounds like the right platform for you, there are two hosting options:

• Pro Unlimited - $144/year
• Repost by SoundCloud - $30/year

If you spring for Pro Unlimited, you can access more advanced profile features like monetizing your music directly through SoundCloud, scheduling when your tracks go live, and turning off public comments.

When to Use Allears

If you’re an independent blogger or a company looking to expand the reach of your written content, Allears is worth considering.

Who is Allears for?

Allears was built for writers, and can help you translate your written content into an easily accessible audio format. With both written content and audio content available, you can grow your audience through better organic visibility.

What are the advantages of using Allears?

Allears can help you take your written content, turn it into a script and record a narrated version directly within your web browser. The process contains plenty of handy tutorials and tips on best practices so that your narrated recordings come out smooth and ready for showtime.

From there, you can take that recorded audio version and easily embed it on nearly any web page or publishing platform, like WordPress, Medium, Ghost and others.

Instead of requiring your subscribers to sit down and read, they can experience your latest blog post or ebook via audio recordings in the car, while doing the dishes, in the shower, on the way to moon, etc. etc.

Allears’ embeddable player doesn’t carry the flashy look that SoundCloud’s does, helping it blend seamlessly onto web pages without distracting visitors and drawing too much attention away from the site design or content it lives next to.

What kind of analytics does Allears provide?

Built for bloggers and writers, the platform was designed with the recording of written content in mind. Allears helps you closely monitor the performance of each recording through the lens of audience engagement. You can track metrics like “deep listens” to see how far your subscribers get into the recording, alongside standard metrics like overall listens over time.

How much does it cost for hosting?

Maybe the best benefit of jumping into Allears now is that it’s a new player in town and is currently free to use.

While a subscription model is on the horizon for new features and tools, Allears offers a free way for you to enter the world of audio content by leveraging what you’ve already written. That means lots of SEO benefits and a brand new way to engage with and grow your audience.

What about using both?

Unless you’re a writer who moonlights as a killer bassist, there’s probably not a whole lot of use cases for subscribing to both platforms.

The overlap in features like embeddable players, excellent hosting capabilities, and insightful analytics make these platforms both well-tailored for completely different audiences.

Writers experimenting with audio content, stick with Allears.

Musicians looking to share their latest track, sign up for SoundCloud.

Everyone else, have fun with your respective hobbies.