Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

LibreTime VS SoundCloud

Compare LibreTime VS SoundCloud and see what are their differences

LibreTime logo LibreTime

LibreTime is a community driven fork of SourceFabric's Airtime.

SoundCloud logo SoundCloud

Enjoy music & follow favourite artists
  • LibreTime Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-27
  • SoundCloud Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-13

SoundCloud

$ Details
-
Release Date
2007 January
Startup details
Country
Germany
State
Berlin
City
Berlin
Founder(s)
Alexander Ljung
Employees
250 - 499

LibreTime videos

LibreTime Tutorial: How to install LibreTime

More videos:

  • Tutorial - LibreTime 101: How to schedule a podcast to play the newest episode on an automatic basis
  • Tutorial - Libretime Tutorial: How to upload and schedule tracks

SoundCloud videos

Spotify vs Soundcloud - An Honest Comparison

More videos:

  • Review - Is Soundcloud Free | How It Works and Is Soundcloud Right For You
  • Review - Is Soundcloud Go Worth It?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to LibreTime and SoundCloud)
SHOUTcast
100 100%
0% 0
Music Streaming
0 0%
100% 100
Broadcast
100 100%
0% 0
Music
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare LibreTime and SoundCloud

LibreTime Reviews

  1. Be prepared to face the terminal

    Running for some (4) years Airtime 2.5.2 (latest free version), now moving to LibreTime because of various runtime (unsupported PHP too old etc.). My description also includes the (painfully) migration of the existing database, so new users might read that part as a story.

    Installation

    Nothing fancy, install OS (Ubuntu 18.04), git and curl are probably already there or at the distance of an sudo apt -y git curl, install icecast and apache2 (or whatever the web server you might need if you plan to pump the stream in a web page), then read the Libre docs, clone the repo and install -fiap.

    Do NOT use Ubuntu later than 18.04 (so no 20) because it will not work.

    Back to installer: did not work 100% mainly because of the post install setup (the web part), which have the habit of not saving the changed password for admin and others, so a nano visit to /etc/airtime/airtime.conf and on liquidsoap might be needed. Also /etc/airtime/icecast_pass might need tweaking as well.

    So I had to stop everything (service apache2 stop, libretime runtime as well), change the passwords to match icecast, move airtime.conf to a backup location and rerun the web part, which worked perfectly.

    [optional] Move of existing airtime database

    Files moved from another server to this new one, 70 GB, rsync, grab a coffee (ok, more than one) and copy everything in the exact same default location (/srv/airtime/stor/). All good. Database move: complete pain. My setup is postgres, which does not support select from one database and insert in another, and the dblink postgres specific thing sucks ass. Also, postgres is quite slow, database fields slightly differs, so I had to export in a CSV the airtime tables (ccfiles, cchistory, ccshow etc.) Some of the tables had around 700.000 rows and I had to do manual SQL in order to map the old existing foreign keys over the new ones - took one day but all good.

    The run

    My setup is one main (webserver + icecast) machine - which acts also as a relay for the second machine - and libretime sits on a second machine. Although the interface is relatively different than what airtime 2.5.2 has, I was able to setup the params, stream, schedule shows etc. in no time. The dragging of tracks into the right panel does not respect the UI (meaning I am dragging between songs 100 and 101 but I end up with the new track somewhere below some rows) but I can live with that. The same limitation of a show that cannot have more than 24 hours is present, but other than that, everything it is running for a week now on a 4 GB RAM machine with CPU sitting most of the time in one digit. Import is very quick, smart blocks is a killer, and it works.

    Conclusion

    Although is not a stable release and is probably driven by a handful of guys having another jobs and doing changes in the spare time, it is a good fork which runs. Be comfortable with ssh and terminal because you might need to do this, especially when integrating with web servers, certbot, redirecting streams to HTTPS, making Icecast SSL-aware etc. But that's how Linux infrastructure is running, so no complains here.

    πŸ‘ Pros:    Free|Quick|Community|Minimal documentation|Source-code
    πŸ‘Ž Cons:    Alpha|Setup|Migration

List of Top Free Open Source & Self Hosted Application for Media Streaming
LibreTime – Simple, open source platform that lets you broadcast streaming radio on the web (fork of Airtime). AGPL-3.0 PHP

SoundCloud Reviews

  1. The best audio streaming service on the market

    Great for both music producers and music labels. It's robust and very convenient.

  2. Diverse Music Community

    SoundCloud stands out as a unique platform, fostering a diverse music community and providing a platform for emerging artists. Despite minor drawbacks like ad interruptions and discoverability challenges, it remains a valuable resource for those seeking a wide range of musical content.

    🏁 Competitors: Spotify
    πŸ‘ Pros:    Unlimited uploads|Community engagement|Free tier with ads|Versatile content
    πŸ‘Ž Cons:    Ad interruptions in free version|Discoverability challenges|Quality disparities

Best Spotify Alternatives In The World [Top 10] 2024
SoundCloud hosts over 200 million files, including songs and podcasts, making it a hotspot for emerging indie artists. While Spotify offers a curated experience with mainstream artists, SoundCloud fosters a vibrant community for discovering new talent and engaging with user-generated content.
9 Best Free Music Download Sites in 2022
As a professional tip, we recommend you use Soundcloud and Geekersoft YouTube to MP3 to download music for free. However, the final choice is entirely up to you! If you have any suggestions, please share your feedback with us.
23 Best Podcast Hosting Platforms in 2022 (Free and Cheap)A Collection and Review of the Top Platforms to Host Your Podcast
SoundCloud’s free plan affords you 3 hours of content per month and basic reporting. Upgrading to their SoundCloud Pro ($6/month) and Unlimited Pro ($12/month) plans gives you access to a more robust feature set that gives you the freedom to produce more content as well as promote it effectively. Let’s take a look at the features you’ll get with the Unlimited Pro plan.
Source: www.ryrob.com
Podcast hosting
For hobby podcasters: Anchor and Soundcloud both provide a free hosting solution. They're both limited in terms of functionality (and both use ads to earn revenue).
Source: transistor.fm
Top 10 Spotify Alternatives You Can Try (2019)
Soundcloud is constantly adding new features to make discovery easier. The Upload is a feature that was added just recently and it surfaces the latest music uploaded by indie artists in a playlist – curated just for you. Apart from the huge collection, SoundCloud is known to pack all common features like playlists, a stream of artists you follow, and the ability to skip...
Source: beebom.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, SoundCloud seems to be a lot more popular than LibreTime. While we know about 95 links to SoundCloud, we've tracked only 1 mention of LibreTime. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

LibreTime mentions (1)

  • Open source music streaming?
    Https://libretime.org/ seems like a helper tool for setting up icecast and other radio type services? I've only just learned about it just now so you'll want to evaluate it for yourself. Source: over 2 years ago

SoundCloud mentions (95)

  • Stream Miror B's Grav Drive Spool by Third Cow
    Https : // soundcloud . Com / third-octave / miror-bs-grav-drive-spool. Source: 8 months ago
  • How can I get the soundcloud downloading of a playlist to sleep?
    Yt-dlp --add-header Authorization: "" https://soundcloud.com/. Source: 8 months ago
  • Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - Find language partners, ask questions, and get accent feedback - July 12, 2023
    Go to Vocaroo, Soundcloud or Clypit and record your voice. Source: 11 months ago
  • Recent DNS issues?
    Seems like after the update to 2023.4 I am unable to access certain websites. It may have nothing to do with the latest release. But I cannot access (for example) soundcloud.com or arcboosts.com from any server I try from. Never had this issue before, and not happening on other devices with vpn turned off. Tried with both dns ad blocking on and off within the mullvad ui. Source: 12 months ago
  • 403 Error?
    The app works fine, along with w.souncloud.com links which are embeds. All help links work, but the moment you try to go to the normal soundcloud.com, it gives that error. Source: 12 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing LibreTime and SoundCloud, you can also consider the following products

AzuraCast - AzuraCast is a free and open-source self-hosted "web radio station in a box".

Spotify - Map shows when two people play same song at same time

Centova Cast - Centova Cast is the world's most advanced Internet radio stream hosting control panel.

Deezer - Deezer is a music streaming app created in France. It is available in 180 counties and gets 16 million users a month. 6 million of the users have paid subscriptions. Read more about Deezer.

RadioBOSS - RadioBOSS provides professional radio programming engineering and automation at a fraction of what...

Last.fm - The world's largest online music service. Listen online, find out more about your favourite artists, and get music recommendations, only at Last.fm