I stumbled upon a website today that has at least a dozen of our songs available to play and download. Each song is accompanied by the photo we used when uploaded to SoundCloud. From what little I've been able to determine:

- The site is registered as located in Burnaby, Canada; however, that could be spoofed.
- The URL of the site is syloken.com - LOAD AT YOUR OWN RISK.
- Playing a song does not take you to SC
- Down loading one requires flash and I'm not about to go that route.
- Since there is a band of the same name it is difficult to search for comments about the site.

How did they rip them from Soundcloud sans a hack or recording each one? And I only had a couple of the songs available for download. Even more strange is that their opening page lists many popular songs available for download...also free.

Disturbing to say the least. I attached a screen shot of their page (partial) with our music.

Any thoughts? Thanks,

Bud

EDIT: Other forum folks's music is also there.

Hmmm, I see a whole bunch of my songs are on that site too, also available for download with the song pics from soundcloud.

None of my songs on soundcloud have download enabled.

How did they do that?

Only thing I can figure is they used a bot to record them from SoundCloud and then load them to their site. But why are they doing that with folks like J&B? SC has millions of songs. I don't think we are in much demand.

Bud

Well....I checked that link you noted.....and did a search.

They do list "You're Lookinng For World_Remix" there.....huh?
Under that song I clicked my 'chulaivet1966" link and ALL the songs I have on S/C are listed on a new page also.
No...it's not the S/C profile page...it's their page layout.

My drivel does not have what one calls a 'fan base' so it is puzzling.
I'm befuddled and can't see how any website entity could benefit from doing this?

I'll be watching what other G2 comes into this thread regarding that site.

Carry on....thanks for giving us a heads up.

Just for giggles I decided to search to see if they had any of my tunes, so I typed http://syloken.com/mp3/kajunjeaux/, and sure enough I found four of my tunes there. When I used the pull down menu and looked under 'Newest Music' my Kajunjeaux name was listed. It appears everyone's music at SoundCloud must have been moved there.

Kajun Jeaux

Bud,

I just checked and see some of my stuff there as well. Really weird - I also see it's a WordPress site, which means they have some advanced media tools, etc.

The other interesting thing is that the music (mine anyway) sounds like it has been boosted volume-wise, again very strange.

No idea how they could have lifted this content from SoundCloud, especially if the tracks do not have the download feature enabled - plus they cleanly lifted the artwork as well...

Thanks for posting this - kind of disturbing and would like to investigate a bit more. If they lifted this content, what else from SoundCloud could they have? Profile information? That would suck!

Bob

Seems they have most folks. Even the stuff I had on Soundcloud is there. I only had stuff on Soundcloud to see how it worked. I don’t see how anyone would be all that interested in my stuff.

I accidentally went to a different page off this site it came back with an error and pointed me off to a site with a URL ending .me. This is very suss.


Tony

That's scary. I wonder if it's just all people on SoundCloud?

I just looked up the domain registrar...….foreign owned


Registrant Contact
Name: WhoisGuard Protected
Organization: WhoisGuard, Inc.
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 0823-03411, Panama Panama PA
Phone: +507.8365503
Ext:
Fax: +51.17057182
Fax Ext:
Email:201aa0be5af345449436ef99cb155378.protect@whoisguard.com

What is WhoisGuard?

WhoisGuard is a privacy protection service that prevents people from seeing your name, address, phone number and email when they do a Whois search on your domain. It puts its address information to the public Whois instead of yours to protect you from potential spam and even identity theft.



So the thief is trying to hide....

Nothing came up for my name so it appears they're only ripping off you talented guys.

Interesting article.....

Whoisguard: A proxy for crime targeting the USA from the USA?

Another site showed the Canada information you referenced Bud:

Datacenter: Cloudflare, Inc.
Server IP: 104.27.157.174
Location: Canada
City: Montreal
Nameservers: bayan.ns.cloudflare.com, lisa.ns.cloudflare.com

So that just means the website and data are stored there.

Haha. Did you search on your SC name or log-in?

Yep!! I'm not that talented but they also have a bunch of my SoundCloud songs, about 14. I did just write to report to SoundCloud, not sure what good that will do.

Hmm...
evil bird spreads the seeds? Some of my stuff is there too.
I doubt S.cloud will or can do anything about this...

But I believe Google can... at least remove it from their search engine.
If somebody wants to write to them to block this site, I will sign it.

https://support.google.com/legal/answer/3110420?hl=en

I just put in a complaint to Google. It appears each person must individually must file a complaint.

Yeah they probably use a robot to rip the songs from sc and load them onto their site. A case of good software being used for a not so good cause. There may be many ways they make money from doing this, some of which we cannot even dream. They may be collecting email addresses or making money from advertising (affiliate links) who knows. I have learned from studying seo that if you get tons of visitors to your site there are tons of ways of making money. If you found them they are probably ranking in google.

It seems this sort of stuff has been happening for some time. See https://community.soundcloud.com/trust-safety-229932/all-of-my-tracks-on-soundcloud-as-stream-only-are-available-as-free-downloads-on-numerous-other-sites-i-never-authorized-how-6603240

Tony

I found my stuff on loads of sites which I find unnerving. All the fuss about copyright on the net means nothing when work gets hijacked so easily. I have deleted my SC account, not that it will have much effect.

Update: They seem to have direct links to SC as my stuff has dissapeared from two sites after I deleted my account.
Check the privacy settings before you delete anything as it may not be neccesary.

How to protect your music from download on sites outside SoundCloud

Edit the track(s) you want to protect from download (click on the pencil)
Click on the tab Permissions
Uncheck all options
Save changes

Thanks for the tip Chris. Even I, who just have a few song snippets and only one actual complete song had my stuff copied over to syloken.com. I went through the permissions on SC as you referenced and I'll see if they drop off syloken after a bit. Thanks!

Interesting thread.

My music is everywhere, including a few sites where I have to play whack-a-mole periodically, but I'm not on syloken.com

EDIT: never mind, it seems my tracks are no longer on SoundCloud. It's been 13 years since I would have posted anything there. Above, it was said that this site has a direct link from SoundCloud, so that explains it.

I pasted Kajun jeaux's link and replaced his name with mine. I tried several variations of my name again today and did find my songs. Suddenly, I almost feel talented...

Why is everyone thinking this is necessarily a bad thing?

I'm not maaking any money form any of those songs that they have on there...... yep.... I looked up Herb Hartley and Guitarhacker..... different songs on each search. PLus songs that I'm either only playing on or have mixed. And stuff I had forgotten about.

The downside is I didn't see any way to contact them to ask to have my material removed. ANyone else see a "CONTACT US" link?

Internet Rule #1 - If you post it on the internet it is available for anyone who wants it. Full stop.

Yep... if it's audio, it can be grabbed easily even without a DL.

I didn't see where they were charging for the DL....even so, it's not legal to allow DL of music that you don't own.... remember NAPSTER?

From a little research starting with Tenuis's link I learned that there are many sites doing this and that SC has been aware of it for at least two years. SC always responds to inquiries that they'll report it to their "Trust and Safety" team.

I understand that SC cannot stop bots from recording audio from their site; however, they can certainly go after the sites that host the songs. Some of the sites, according to one report, even have ads!

Ridiculous.



Point taken but try posting a cover song or a cell phone video of certain "stars" on YouTube and see how that works out. They are vigilant. Obviously SC is not. If someone wants to to bypass our album on the streaming platforms and deny us a few small percentages of a penny of revenue for our vast coffers I can live with it It's SC's lack of willingness to do anything about it that PO's me.

They do not pick songs based on talent (I have fourteen tracks there)... it must be a bot-thing...


Will

Durn it,

I like the look of the site better than the look of SoundCloud. Wish they were honest. They must have a direct link to SoundCloud's storage servers. They even have deleted snippets that were made as exercises for an online class with "private" access that only class members and instructors had access to.

Doing the above from the SC permissions tab seems to prevent both playback and download from this site ( I object to the download part).
Thanks for the suggestion Sinbad, and to Bud for the alert.

Given that SC has know about this for quite a while, and it seems that these sites, for whatever reason, can access SC file system with impunity, the question arises as to which other information could they mine for. Basic accounts don't include much information, but pro versions will probably contain quite a bit that is not meant for third parties.

Okay guys, I got a response from Soundcloud. They do know about it and do try to contact or disable if they can. However they explained how it happens and I agree probably not a lot they can do. It's called RIP THE STREAM. I imagine this happens on any site out there probably even from Spotify. I sent an email also to Google, haven't heard back from them. So here's the official response.

SoundCloud Trust & Safety Team (SoundCloud)
Apr 23, 14:44 CEST
Hi there,

Thanks for writing to tell us about this service, we certainly share your concerns. I'll try explain why it is currently possible for these sites to exist (and why we are not able to shut down these sites) and how we hope to improve the security of content hosted with us at SoundCloud.

Websites, like the one you reported, are exploiting vulnerabilities which are inherent in this streaming technology, which allows them to rip the stream and provide it for download elsewhere. This means that they are not downloading the original file you have uploaded with us, but instead the streamed audio (which is 128 kbps). This is the downside to using a system which allows you to be heard by everyone, everywhere.

While we are doing all we can to improve this situation, there are a number of measures you may want to consider to prevent unauthorized downloads of your content. While we cannot guarantee that this will stop these sites from accessing your content without your permission, it will put you in the best position possible to prevent people from downloading content without your consent.

• If you have not done so already, disable downloads on your tracks. Like this: https://help.soundcloud.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003565708-Enabling-downloads-for-your-track

• Disable app playback, so that your track will not be playable outside of the SoundCloud platform and our own apps (i.e. the official SoundCloud iOS and Android apps).

There's more information on how to do this here: https://help.soundcloud.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003564608-Disabling-app-playback-for-your-track

As the website you reported is not hosted or controlled by us, we technically do not have any means to take it down. What we would normally do is try and contact the owner of such a website (if they provide any contact information) and/or the company hosting the website and request they shut down the service/website. That being said, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that the third party will comply with our request.

I hope this helps to provide further clarification.

Thanks again,

SoundCloud Trust & Safety Team
[u][/u]

It looks to me like this is just a site that uploads download links for anything posted to SoundCloud. It most definitely isn't legal and worth reporting. Hopefully Google or SoundCloud will take action! I'm surprised the person running the site has managed to make it happen.

Sure, make it so your songs can only be played on SoundCloud. Kinda defeats the whole purpose of posting your music if you cannot share it via apps and other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Bottom line...post your music and accept that it WILL BE STOLEN or stay safe and do not share your music. Personally I am thrilled that sites like this help get my music played by more people!

There is another way that might protect your music on SoundCloud. When I searched my name I noticed that only my public tracks were listed on there. So if you make your tracks private when uploading to SoundCloud it may help.

For anyone not sure what this means, basically your private songs will not appear on your profile or be searchable. However anyone you share the link with can still listen to it.

Sammy,

My private audio files (online audio class) appear on the false site.

JohnJohnJohn I suppose you are correct in that anything out there can be pirated and there's no such thing as privacy these days. You are correct in that trying to protect it will limit those who can listen to your music. Unfortunately like myself maybe a little naive, wasn't aware that could happen, so I do appreciate having the option of making a choice whether to allow it to be stolen or not. So I can decide if I just want my friends and family to hear it or other SoundCloud users. Or if someone is interested I could specifically direct them to my SoundCloud site. What's the use of just allowing it to be stolen? Is anyone going to contact you or promote you about your music? Can't even have the satisfaction that people are enjoying it? Such is the world today and it's no wonder musicians are making $10.00 a year if it's all free. I guess we're all doing it for the love of it and sending it out to the world to be played by people we'll never hear from or know.

I am troubled by Jim Fogle’s last post. His clear intent was not to make those songs public, and yet they were lifted.

Sound Cloud's reply rings a bit hollow to me. To rip off a tune you have to know where it is in the first place. These sites are mirroring the content of an account, not only ripping off. In my case there were two extra tunes by folks who had linked to my stuff in the list available which is wierd to say the least.
it woud be interesting to know if when you download from them whether it shows on SC's stats.

As I interpret the response to Donna’s inquiry it appears SC has not hacked and the pirate site is not linking to your SC account when a song is played or downloaded from the ripoff site. They are recording the song (as I suggested in my OP) and uploading that to a sever for download and/or playing. Any of us could do that with available software. I can envision no way to prevent the recording of a streaming song or video.

But IMO they are obviously violating the copyright of every song they make available. Given that they are ripping off some big players they run the risk of getting shutdown by them.

Bud

PS The recording of files marked private is very strange. My few private files were not copied. Perhaps at some point the private files copied were public?

I am very grateful to Bud for alerting us to this site and that other sites like it exist.

Bud likely is correct that my online course files were posted public instead of private as I intended.

I still say the rip-off site's interface looks better than SoundCloud's interface. SoundCloud's pages are too cluttered with ads for music I'll never listen to.

Well I went there and my stuff is there also, hhhmmmm seems I’m more famous than I thought. LOL http://syloken.com/mp3/RobHelms/

Pretty weird how someone can do something like this. I wonder how they get revenue from the site. Ads?

I wonder how many people care about downloads anyway these days?

Back 10-15 years ago when MP3 players were popular it was a big deal, but these days don't most people just stream the music they want to listen to?

Hi all
Interesting topic.

But I am not to surprised anyone can rip a stream once its playing you can re record it.
As far as pictures go also no prob, in most all browsers just right click on the pic and download Image , try it on my avatar here.
No fancy software or anything required. The moment you give someone a link any one can do all this that has the link. Or the if file is public shareable.
There are plenty of ways to sound cloud and others. This forums user showcase is a goldmine of songs and art work. In this case you can rip the art work with a simple screen capture.

Mike

While this discovery is indeed disturbing, it doesn't make sense that they would be doing this without being able to make any money from the music that's available for download on their website. I suspect that they are probably using Audials One, which is a program that can be set up to automatically record five different streams of songs at a time from online radio stations as well as from Spotify and Youtube. I've owned a copy for years but have mostly used it to find and listen to various online radio stations from all over the world. It's a very powerful program that can also record streaming video. It has been consistently been voted the best program of its kind for years. Here's the link to their website:

https://audials.com/en/one/what_is_new_2019.html

Or, just search for Audials One and read some of the articles at the links from the search results.

Contacting Google is only one of the steps needed to stop this. The best thing to do is to contact the host of the website and ask them to take down the website because of copyright infringement. IOW, none of you gave them permission to post your music on their website, so what they're doing is simply illegal. Any honest web host will quickly comply with your request, unless the person doing this is also their own web host. If that's the case, informing search engines about the site's violation of copyright laws would result in their site being removed from search results. The following article is just one of many that goes into extensive detail about all the steps that can be taken to deal with such websites:

https://orbitingweb.com/blog/reporting-copyrights-infringement/

A simple DMCA has worked numerous times for me.
https://www.upcounsel.com/dmca-claim

You can do this on your own (no lawyer needed) in my experience.
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2009/07/06/sample-dmca-take-down-letter/id=4501/
Hosting companies do not want lawsuits; they eat the profits and cost customers ..
"The DMCA says that, while an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is not liable for displaying information that infringes a copyright, the ISP needs to remove the material from their users' websites if they receive proper notice. "
In my experience they usually ask the site owner to cease, and if not met, they just take the site down. The onus is on the owner; the ISP won't edit the site, not their job or responsibility.

To find the domain owner is a simple Whois
https://www.whois.com/whois/syloken.com

To find the hosting company is a little trickier, but we know they use Cloudflare nameservers and NameCheap, Inc. for the domain registry (whois exposes that), so Namecheap has billing info, meaning reliable contact. <grin>

Pinging the website reveals the IP and finding the owner of said IP shows the Host, which is also Cloudflare.
https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET6-2606-4700-1/pft?s=2606%3A4700%3A30%3A%3A681b%3A9cae

Hope that helps anyone that wants to follow through on a complaint.
A DMCA filed with Cloudflare would start to make the site owners wiggle fairly quickly.

/We're all in this together .. Red Green
// I mean we're all in the music biz together; my music is not on the site so I can't file the complaint
/// I got to two slashies so this one is just for fun