Wavekit compared to other audio hosting services

If you're shopping around for a new audio hosting service Wavekit might be just the thing for you. Let's check out how it compares to the popular alternatives in the market today.

In this article:

• Services overview
• General features
• Audio player features
• Streaming quality
• Audio encoding
• Player size
• Player load speed
• Player privacy features
• Wrapping up

Services overview

These are the audio hosting services I will be comparing:

Wavekit

This is us. Wavekit is an audio hosting service for audio companies and professionals. We're focused on helping to market audio products and services online.

Soundcloud

Soundcloud is a social network around music. It also offers additional services for music artists such as distribution to streaming platforms and cloud-based audio mastering. Soundcloud is great fit for artists looking to grow a community.

Mixcloud

Mixcloud is a streaming platform with monetization options for creators and automatic distribution of revenue to copyright owners. Mixcloud is a great platform to host DJ mixes, podcasts, and radio shows.

Audius

Audius is a free social media and audio streaming platform that offers monetization through a custom virtual currency. Audius is a good fit for artists that want to share their music and monetize it.

Audio

Audio is a free audio hosting service connected to the free Audacity audio editor. Audio was designed to be able to easily share any type of audio content online for free.

General features

Different services have different approaches for solving different problems. We're focused on helping you add audio to your website as easily as possible. We don't offer any social media or monetization features.

Audio player features

All audio hosting services offer media players that can be embedded in a website but these vary wildly in features and their purpose.

We designed our player exclusively to help you add audio to your website. It's completely unbranded, doesn't have links to our website, and doesn't use cookies that could track your vistors.

This is our default audio player with no customizations:

Check out more demos of our player.

Due to privacy concerns, we haven't embeded the player of the other services into this article.

Audio streaming quality

Good audio quality is critical to ensure the best audio experience. Especially if your main audience are discerning users that will evaluate your content critically.

Audio encoding

Not all MP3s are created equally. The quality of the encoding is as important as the streaming quality.

At Wavekit we're very transparent in how we process your audio (pun intended). For MP3 encoding we use the LAME encoder. For FLAC we use FFmpeg's native encoder. Both are battle tested encoders and considered to be some of the best in the industry.

Unfortunately, other audio hosting services do not offer information on how they process audio so we cannot compare.

Player size

Every time a visitor comes to your website they'll need to download the audio player, even if they never click the play button. Embedding a lightweight player is essential for a good user experience.

These are the sizes of the different players before your visitor clicks on the play button:

These were measured at the date of publishing this article. The numbers are measuring transferred bytes after compression and do not include audio bytes.

URLs we used for measuring: Wavekit, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Audius, Audio.

Player load speed

Other than the player size, there are other factors that determine how fast an embedded player loads. We've put a lot of effort into optimizing our infrastructure so that your content is available as fast as possible for your visitors.

Source WebPageTest results: Wavekit, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Audius, Audio.

Player privacy features

It's important to consider the privacy features of embedded media players. Visitors of your website could be subjected to third party tracking cookies and their behavior could be shared with advertisers.

Furthermore, with the GDPR laws, the data controller (the website embedding the player) is obligated to disclose third party cookies and any data sharing.

Our player doesn't use cookies or any tracking technologies and it doesn't make requests to advertisements companies that would send personal data like the IP address. Our metrics don't capture any personal information either. See our documentation for more information on the data collected by our player.

Privacy policies: Wavekit, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Audius, Audio.

Wrapping up

If you think Wavekit might be a good fit for your use case give us a try! You can test Wavekit for free during 30 days with no credit card.

Have any questions or comments on this article? Do not hesistate to contact us.