If you turn on the radio today all you hear is top 40 over and over again. If you want new music go to Soundcloud.
Soundcloud is an app that allows people to share music. It is free and easy to upload and find out about new artists, which is why everybody starts off their music careers there. Soundcloud is based out of Germany and people have been uploading music on there since 2007.
“That is a platform I knew that underground artists use to get started,” said Darien Suter, amateur rapper and producer. “So I made my first song and I was like here is where I can upload it to.”
The kids who upload songs to Soundcloud do it because they enjoy making music and want to influence people.
“I started rapping just cause I love music,” said junior, Gerardo Almanza, amateur rapper. “I want to start a new wave, doing it for the culture”.
The song ‘Luv is Ded’ was put onto Soundcoud on October 17, by Luke Macy and Gerardo Almanza. As of November 8, the track has 11.6k plays. This success influenced other people to start making music.
“I think since we hit 10 thousand views we probably inspired more than 10 or 20 people to make music,” said Luke Macy.
Music artists tend to go by an alias. Gerardo’s rap alias is AK Rardo.
Rappers have friends that they have when they become famous. Luke Macy and AK Rardo were friends long before they started making music.
“Freshman year I played soccer with Luke Macy,” said Almanza.
That friendship evolved into a creative team
“Then we started a group chat for memes,” continued Macy.
Music used to be hard to share. You used to have to go through a label if you wanted to get your music widely broadcasted. Now, because of Soundcloud anyone can put out a song and it can be listed to by millions of people. Because of that that convenience, people with no musical background are sharing their music.
Music is a hard thing to master, which means that the people that have been practicing music might get a little annoyed that these people are intruding in their space.
“It’s kind of annoying since most of them don’t really know music,” said Suter, “but at the same time I like it because it makes me glad that music isn’t a dead trait.”
As the years go by, these uploaded artists are the influences for the younger kids.
“My biggest influences would be, shout out Gucci Mane, shout out Chief Kief, Kid Kudi, Kanye West, Joey Badass, 21 Savage that’s who I love. And Lil Xan,” said Almanza.
If you’re interested in supporting these local musicians, you can find them on Soundcloud @Luke Macy n AK Rardo, and @Darien Suter, and their Instagram’s @_gxrxrdx @_luke_macy @dariens011 @anton.hastings