A note about Soundcloud
Where did everything go?
Some people may have already noticed that episodes of Mythos, along with my other audio dramas, are no longer on Soundcloud. I took them off yesterday for two reasons:
- Soundcloud has refused to rule out the possibility that anything and everything on its platform might be scraped by Large Language Models. I'm not of a mind to help this ridiculous snake-oil AI grift in any way.
- The files that I put up on Soundcloud had been downloaded and put up on YouTube by several AI-powered sites that were seeking to charge subscriptions to listen to shows they had no rights in - I spent most of yesterday trying to get them taken down.
As of this weekend, I now have a private RSS feed to facilitate delivery of Crowley and Mythos etc to Kickstarter backers (Mythos needs to have new music written and recorded because the original soundtrack s not cleared for broadcast). The shows will reappear there when they are ready.
I'm sorry that these shows are temporarily unavailable, but it seemed smart to nip this situation in the bud before they were suddenly, uncontrollably, everywhere.
Lastly, while it's not up to me what people do or where they go on the internet, it is worth pointing out that if you're listening to BBC Audio fiction (or audio fiction from anywhere) on a supposedly "curated" YouTube channel, then this is exactly the same as watching a pirated movie; you are putting money in the pockets of people who have stolen this material from its owners. While we may not worry too much about that when the owners are big movie studios, the owners in this case are the people who got paid very little, if anything, to create audio shows.
Well that was a lot preachier than I wanted it to be.
Have a nice Wednesday.