What happened to Dancing Astronaut’s SoundCloud?
The past few months have been a touchy one for SoundCloud with numerous artists and publications having their channels suspended, or worse, completely terminated, thanks to a barrage of automated copyright infringements. Dancing Astronaut is no different.
For the past 4 years we have been uploading our AXIS and RADAR mixes, over 300 in total, to Soundcloud. Carl Cox, Martin Garrix, Afrojack, Tchami, Oliver Heldens and many more of the industry’s biggest names have all made our show one of the best in the industry. Sadly, the recent spat of infringement notifications has forced us to remove every single mix we have ever uploaded.
On Thursday morning we woke up to over 30 automated takedown notifications, including two specific “flags” for tracks that had once been given away as free downloads by their respective artists but were now owned by labels and distributors who we shall not name. It didn’t matter that two years ago when we hosted the content in question the tracks were not owned by a major label. We were in breach of Soundcloud’s TOS and dangerously close to having our account terminated — three strikes and you’re out — so we made the tough decision for ourselves. In an effort to protect our account, we have removed the entirety of our mixes — save for a few of our most recent uploads.
You can now find all of our mixes on Mixcloud and iTunes. Will Dancing Astronaut return to SoundCloud? Most definitely. We’ll still be reposting our favorite tracks and using the channel to showcase incredible unsigned artists, but the days of listening to Dancing Astronaut mixes on SoundCloud are sadly over until the company and major labels can work out their differences.