Alternatives to Soundcloud and Additions to the Jukebox

As great and as handy as Soundcloud is for finding great ingame music and effects, it is, sadly, not the be-all-end-all of the music & sound effects universe. Sometimes I find myself looking for a very specific sound that is not available in Soundcloud, but I do have it downloaded on, for example, my Google Drive. I'd like to be able to add a: direct link to a music file (Google Drive, Dropbox, own site, etc.) link to youtube

It would also be awesome if you could work with <a href="http://syrinscape.com" rel="nofollow">http://syrinscape.com</a> to allow the GM to link our account to theirs and gain access, than control it in roll20 and play it for everyone.(otherwise it's really convoluted to play over the internet. But that would require getting their support too.

Roll20 Sound-related Suggestions Report: As of December 4, 2014, I have identified TEN suggestion threads related to improving Jukebox / Audio services for Roll20. Some of the suggestions are unique and specific, and stand on their own. Other suggestion posts are overlapping and generalized, and could be combined together for maximum voting-up power. If you feel that your Suggestion is a match with one of the other links below, please add your Comments and your Vote on the other thread that would maximize the voting solidarity. From my research I felt that the current thread is the best thread to bring other suggestions into this thread & vote it up. The reason is this thread is the general one called "Alternatives to Soundcloud" so that people can mention all the different alternative sound services people might want. This thread is appropriate to accommodate some of the other suggestions like Spotify, Tabletop Audio, Syrinscape. Attention: Roll20 Devs. Please look over this index of Sound-suggestions when you are working on sounds and considering related features. I hope this helps with organization of the many Suggestions. Consider combining 1-6 threads suggesting alternative sound services. The following 6 threads are excellent Suggestions but some or all could be combined with the top "Alternatives to Soundcloud" suggestion in order to maximize voting power. Or they could be maintained as separate suggestions if people want to vote service-by-service for which ones you really want in particular. I think we would be best-served by combining the different audio-services suggestions, just to let Roll20 Devs know that people wanted alternative sound services, thus combine the possible sound-services ideas so they can all be compared and Roll20 Devs choose to answer the ones that seem the best or most likely from the Devs knowledge and research. Alternatives to Soundcloud and Additions to the Jukebox (Score +4 so far) This thread is generalized for any/all improvements to Jukebox! This would be a great thread to add everyone's ideas for other services besides Soundcloud that you might want: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1245252/alternat" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1245252/alternat</a>... Would be nice to Add the Spotify suggestion here if you agree, Add the Tabletop Audio suggestion here, Add the "other audio streaming services" suggestion here, Add the Private Soundcloud suggestion here. Spotify integration for jukebox (Score +1 so far) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1359020/spotify-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1359020/spotify-</a>... Tabletop Audio integration (Score +1 so far) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1247234/tabletop" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1247234/tabletop</a>... Add support for other audio streaming services (Score +1 so far). <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1392586/add-supp" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1392586/add-supp</a>... Implement way to play music clips in private playlists on Soundcloud or other (Score +3 so far) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1243002/implemen" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1243002/implemen</a>... Syrinscape (+1 so far) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1401297/syrinsca" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1401297/syrinsca</a>... Music / SFX Marketplace (Score +1 so far) This is a unique idea to allow selling of sound effects in the Roll20 Marketplace. That's a different idea compared to adding support for alternative sound services, so I feel this suggestion stands alone. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1382351/music-sl" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1382351/music-sl</a>... 2 threads related to organization of your collected sounds within the existing Jukebox feature. Jukebox layout, Multiple playlists (Score +72 so far) This mainly regards organization of the sounds within your jukebox. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1241905/jukebox-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1241905/jukebox-</a>... Jukebox vault (Score +2 so far). This regards organization of your sounds from campaign to campaign. This is related to "Jukebox layout, multiple playlists" but it is not an exact overlap. <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1281976/jukebox-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1281976/jukebox-</a>... 3 threads related to triggering Sounds automatically by something happening in the game. Music / Sound effect Queued by map change or shown handout (Score +73 so far) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1240051/music-sl" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1240051/music-sl</a>... Sound trigger API (Score +14 so far) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1241733/sound-tr" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1241733/sound-tr</a>... Play selected sound file on movement or other trigger (+1 so far) <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1401157/play-sel" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1401157/play-sel</a>... More, related topics Fade in / out for sound effects / music <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1241004/fade-in-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1241004/fade-in-</a>...

Gold, you have certainly earned your name with this post. This is fantastic work. Cheers, friend!

Yes I much appreciate your consolidating efforts

Very well organised, Gold!

Yes please - More sound options for the win! More streaming provider support, more API exposure, more built-in options for triggering sounds based on events.

Matthew T. said: It would also be awesome if you could work with <a href="http://syrinscape.com" rel="nofollow">http://syrinscape.com</a> to allow the GM to link our account to theirs and gain access, than control it in roll20 and play it for everyone.(otherwise it's really convoluted to play other the internet. But that would require getting their support too. This. I actually just made a thread about this and was linked here. I'm sure the DiceStormers would be open to some kind of partnership

Don't forget the folders for organization thread <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1239910/folders-in-addition-to-tags-for-resource-management" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1239910/folders-in-addition-to-tags-for-resource-management</a> has a shoutout to the Jukebox in in it

+1 for syrinscape.

+1 for syrinscape

This is a grand effort. Thanks so much for your hard work. I see loads of excellent suggestions here, some more development-intensive than others. However... I would use the jukebox a HELL of a lot more, right now, if it had a "Stop All" button and/or a search engine so I wouldn't have to frantically scroll up and down to find a file and stop it. There are grand plans afoot, no doubt, among the dev team at roll20 to improve management in general. But these two changes would, to me, be a great stop-gap that could be implemented in the meantime. Keep up the good work.

+1 for Syrinscape

My biggest issue at the moment is that I do not have the legal rights to publicly host the songs for which I've paid license fees to use in private RPG sessions. This means that soundcloud is obviously not an option. In the meantime, does there exist such a program where all my players run it and I can "push out" a song to all of them?

+1

I would certainly like this. I first started roll20 when you could upload your own stuff. And had actually made a major idea based on this capability. Now that its gone its really hard.

+1 for Syrinscape!

Hey Gold - if you find some good stuff on Soundcloud - how can you get Roll20 to see it?

Black Falcon said: Hey Gold - if you find some good stuff on Soundcloud - how can you get Roll20 to see it? To find it personally in your own jukebox --- Find it on Soundcloud. Copy the URL (website address). Open Roll20 Jukebox. Paste the soundcloud URL in the jukebox search box. It should bring the song up. To share it with everyone on Roll20 --- make a thread or a spreadsheet listing all the Soundcloud URL's you like (perhaps with a title saying what you would use that sound for). If you search around the R20 forums, there are 2 or 3 people who have shared large lists / spreadsheets of links to Soundcloud files that are useful for RPG.

Definitely need Youtube support. Soundcloud's selection is quite narrow and often requires some sneaky uploading to get what you want playing. I don't know how feasible everything else is (I definitely want Tabletop Audio), but Youtube should be easy as so many other services will DJ using Youtube videos.

+1 from me to Spotify, the amount of great playlists for DnD from Spotify are huge and I'd love to include them. <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2a330b/dders_i_present_to_you_my_dd_spotify_playlists/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2a330b/dders_i_present_to_you_my_dd_spotify_playlists/</a> Edit: Even just better use of soundcloud, tell me the length of the song, let me skip to a point within it, etc

I'm definitively all about Spotify. It's a paid service or with advertising, but the selection and controls is just so good, that it's really the only way to go. I guess there is no reason to get rid of soundcloud if people prefer that. It would be cool if we could link it to Spotify accounts somehow. Then any music in your spotify account just shows up, or maybe you can flag certain playlists ... Not sure how that would be implimented.

Would love to be able to log in to my google drive or spotify accounts and use what I have there in game, but don't really have much of a preference as to which service as long as I can have the ability to upload and privately within my game use whatever sound files I want. Sound Cloud as it is now just isn't very useful.

+1

I might be missing something, but I don't see a somewhat obvious suggestion listed here: why can't we import/access our SoundCloud playlists AS playlists? This seems, from a dev standpoint, to be just another couple hops down the road from the current jukebox. I've gone to a great deal of effort to get my sounds and songs organized in SoundCloud by theme/setting... But that organization starts and ends in SoundCloud. It would be great to be able to use my playlist URL and grab the whole playlist (perhaps this could be combined with other suggestions for multiple playlists). In any case, this seems like a much easier development project than getting another service involved. I'd be happy to help out where I can. To the mods : does this suggestion seem like it should stand on it's own, did I miss another thread, or is it just fine right here in this thread?THANKS!

Ryan S. said: I might be missing something, but I don't see a somewhat obvious suggestion listed here: why can't we import/access our SoundCloud playlists AS playlists? ... To the mods : does this suggestion seem like it should stand on it's own, did I miss another thread, or is it just fine right here in this thread?THANKS! Ryan, I support your Idea and posting it here. You are welcome to post this as a new suggestion if you want to collect votes very specifically for using SoundCloud Playlists. But I think your suggestion is highly compatible with the current thread, more eyeballs, more togetherness of votes, makes more people seeing your suggested solution. As a fellow Soundcloud user myself, I also recognize Soundcloud normally permits embedding of Playlists to external blogs (in certain manners at least), so this seems like it could be possible.

+1 for Spotify

+1 for alternatives to sound cloud.

+1 for direct links to music files/music files by URL.

+1 again for alternatives to Soundcloud! In my opinion, Google Music would be a wonderful alternative. It's got a comparable, if not a bit of a wider array, of music than Spotify from what I have seen, and the ability to upload your own music to a personal library is an addition that is absolutely awesome. Perhaps there could be something done to allow a DM/GM to link their personal account to a campaign in order to enable the GMusic player for it? It is a paid service, but would be more than worth it, truly, as it could open up a massive array of music and soundbites that people had and have no hope of accessing through Soundcloud, what with its super-strict policy and overzealous scanning software. And hey, it's Google: Everyone's favourite Lord and Master of the Internet.

+1 for alternatives to Soundcloud!

+1 for YouTube support What's posted below was taken directly from my own suggestion post that I made before being informed about this topic. The TL;DR of it is that I was confused why this wasn't already implemented as SoundCloud just kinda sucks. Now, this might've been suggested before, I'm not sure, but lately I've been wondering this more and more, especially with the final battle of my ongoing campaign coming up soon. Is it possible to add the feature to add music from YouTube as well as or even instead of SoundCloud? And if it isn't, why not? I've been thinking about the possible reasons why it isn't the case and I can't believe that it would be a programming problem as there's add-ons for blogs on Tumblr that do exactly the same thing; streaming the audio from YouTube videos. Or is it some arrangement with SoundCloud that prevents it from being added in? I ask because, as I mentioned, I'm coming up on the final battle in my campaign and finding myself having to add a lot of music to SoundCloud for the battle. The problem is all of the songs are already on YouTube so I have to download them off YouTube first, then reupload them to SoundCloud, which is buggy at best and prevents uploads automatically for copyright problems at worst. When the copyright problems crop up I then have to mess with the pitch and the tempo of the song, which usually ruins the song and why I chose it in the first place, just to get it onto SoundCloud. All the while, everything is exactly as I'd like it to be on YouTube already. So yeah, to reiterate, can we get a feature that allows us to add audio from YouTube videos as well as SoundCloud by posting the links to the videos in the same way that something like, say, SCM Music Player works, or can we not, and if we can't, why is that the case? It's definitely my biggest gripe with Roll20 as a whole and never fails to aggrivate me.

+1 Alternatives to soundcloud

+1 Altarnatives ta' soundcloud

Anything other that the SoundCloud "service" would be great. Bonus points if I can use music I have purchased already in my game. Being restricted to using a public playlist through SoundCloud is a joke.&nbsp;

The soundcloud service is restrictive and incredibly limited, we really, really need an alternative.

Soundcloud has progressively become cancerous over the years. It's a copyright nazi in the current state, I can't even upload and play music that I rightfully own.

I agree that we need another service. Soundcloud is terrible, I own a lot of music for rpg (like from Erdenstern), but I can't use it via roll20 right now, cause Soundcloud forbids me from uploading this to their site.

+1 to Soundcloud alternatives. I can understand why direct uploads or services based on direct uploads aren't likely to be implemented (good miggidy the possible copyright issues), but legal services would be great - especially Syrinscape. I'd love to see Google Music integration, personally (and I suspect their API's more available than Spotify's), though I also suspect that to allow players to hear audio from that, all players would have to have Google Music subscriptions or have uploaded the matching pieces to their personal libraries (or both).

NekoIncardine said: + 1 to Soundcloud alternatives . I can understand why direct uploads or services based on direct uploads aren't likely to be implemented (good miggidy the possible copyright issues), but legal services would be great - especially Syrinscape. I'd love to see Google Music integration, personally (and I suspect their API's more available than Spotify's), though I also suspect that to allow players to hear audio from that, all players would have to have Google Music subscriptions or have uploaded the matching pieces to their personal libraries (or both). Google play really shouldn't require everyone to have a copy of/access to &nbsp;the music. After all, you can play music for a small group of freinds with out issue. If you pull out a record and turn-table, CD and Stereo, or even google play to listen to music in the real world, you don't need to ensure everyone present has a copy before hitting play, it really shouldn't be any different on a virtual tabletop.

There is a website called Plug.dj where you can have a friends in a chatroom taking turns playing music. They allow youtube and soundcloud. It would be cool if we could be offered the same feature to use youtube as there are tons of songs on there.

Nolan just sent out an email update... The pertinent part, in case anyone missed it: We've overhauled our Jukebox tools for the next update, along with including tracks from Tabletop Audio . You'll now be better able to organize playlists inRoll20, and have specifically-crafted adventuring music to accompany your questing! Apparently this will be out in a few weeks. Don't know if that means SoundCloud is going to be dropped...

Ryan S. said: Nolan just sent out an email update... The pertinent part, in case anyone missed it: We've overhauled our Jukebox tools for the next update, along with including tracks from Tabletop Audio . You'll now be better able to organize playlists inRoll20, and have specifically-crafted adventuring music to accompany your questing! Apparently this will be out in a few weeks. Don't know if that means SoundCloud is going to be dropped... That's fantastic, Ryan! I missed that update. Thanks for the heads up :)

Ryan S. said: Nolan just sent out an email update... The pertinent part, in case anyone missed it: We've overhauled our Jukebox tools for the next update, along with including tracks from Tabletop Audio . You'll now be better able to organize playlists inRoll20, and have specifically-crafted adventuring music to accompany your questing! Apparently this will be out in a few weeks. Don't know if that means SoundCloud is going to be dropped... Thanks for sharing the update text. Tabletop Audio addition is going to be a cool addition. SoundCloud is not being dropped, as far as I know. Rather the opposite, SoundCloud support is being greatly improved with the new update (such as being able to STOP all tracks playing at once, and ability to collect playlists for different maps in your game). The announcement seems to be saying that Tabletop Audio will be added for another audio source. I wanted to clarify because I've got access to the Pro Subscriber perk of using the Dev server, where some of the new updates are currently in Beta testing, and I've been experimenting with the new Jukebox features on there, using my SoundCloud selections so far. &nbsp;I have not seen the Tabletop Audio features yet, but can attest to the SoundCloud features working with SoundCloud tracks on the Dev server. So far there is no indication of SC being dropped, and instead looks like it is all being improved.

Ryan S. said: Apparently this will be out in a few weeks. Don't know if that means SoundCloud is going to be dropped... As Gold said, there's no plans to drop SoundCloud support (although, their frequent changes to third party usage rules do have us somewhat concerned that someday they'll essentially "drop" us, despite our efforts to spotlight creators from their service).&nbsp; We're excited about Tabletop Audio being added to the available selection of music, and are looking at a few other options we can add down the line. With as many folks as are playing around here these days, we increasingly feel the need to diversify our content in order to serve different tastes!

Tabletop audio will definitely be a nice addition, though I still wish I could just add my own songs.

+1 for syrinscape +1 for personal audio

Having looked over the Terms of Service for Youtube, I think I figured out why it's not included despite the API being easy to implement.&nbsp; The Youtube API ToS explicitly forbids separating the audio and video of a Youtube video, so Roll20 can't have Youtube play music in the background without also showing the video playing in a corner at a minimum size.&nbsp; Can't be covered or anything.&nbsp; It'd be incredibly distracting and probably do more harm than good for the mood of the game. It's possible Roll20 could talk to someone at Youtube to get a more reasonable compromise, but I'm not optimistic.&nbsp; It would be grand if a service like the old MuMu or Turntable popped up that allowed us to share and listen to a more carefully curated playlist together or otherwise allowed us to basically operate an Internet radio station, but I can't think of any service like that.&nbsp; Most either don't let you have precise control over what to play and in what order or would otherwise loudly interrupt with ads.&nbsp; Here's hoping something is in the works, Soundcloud just isn't cutting it. I'm currently trying to work around this by using a livestreaming site and setting MusicBee to play on Audio Out.&nbsp; It's a bit of a wonky setup but at I least get to have excellent DJing controls and everyone listens in sync.

Helmic said: Having looked over the Terms of Service for Youtube, I think I figured out why it's not included despite the API being easy to implement.&nbsp; The Youtube API ToS explicitly forbids separating the audio and video of a Youtube video, so Roll20 can't have Youtube play music in the background without also showing the video playing in a corner at a minimum size.&nbsp; Can't be covered or anything.&nbsp; It'd be incredibly distracting and probably do more harm than good for the mood of the game. It's possible Roll20 could talk to someone at Youtube to get a more reasonable compromise, but I'm not optimistic.&nbsp; Surely that could be done and just have a minimize button on the video while it still plays the audio. I mean, when I listen to the audio of a video on Youtube while the window is minimized the audio and the video aren't separated then. Whatever the case, SoundCloud is agonizing to use. It really hinders Roll20's overall appeal.

I'd love to be able to link my own music or even youtube at a pinch. Soundcloud is rejecting so much stuff lately due to copyright infringment, even though I own the music in question!!

+1 for Syrinscape