SoundCloud Visualizations
2016
Two ways of interactively visualizing commenting behaviour on SoundCloud, the world’s leading social sound platform. “SoundCloud Radar” concentrates on the quantitative, scientific aspect of the data, “SpamCloud” is an artistic rendering focusing on the emotional, narrative side. For these visualizations we analyzed comments posted on the song “Petal to the Maxx” by K.L. in April 2016.
Designed in collaboration with Mustafa Saifee as part of the Dynamic Visualization course led by Markku Reunanen and Jeroen Carelse.
See the full development of the project from initial ideas to execution on our course blog.
“SoundCloud Radar” is an exploratory, interactive tool facilitating the finding and understanding of patterns in commenting and spamming on the music platform SoundCloud.
The interactive visualization shows comments posted on “Petal to the Maxx” by artist K.L, for the month of April 2016. As they are posted in time, comments appear on the radial 24h clock/calendar, revealing patterns in posting time and posting behaviour, but also highlighting unusual, suspicious clusters of comments.
Read more about the functionalities of this visualization on our course blog.
SoundCloud claims that their commenting system connects artists and fans and brings them closer together, but in reality any real connection between artist and fans is instantly blocked by spam comments pushing real commenters out of view in the comment section.
“SpamCloud” engagingly visualizes the fact that real user comments on SoundCloud are vastly outnumbered by spam and SoundCloud user promotion (users posting links to their SoundCloud profiles).
Read more about the development of this visualization on our course blog.
