deadmau5 Swaps Twitter For SoundCloud

deadmau5 - live

Tweeting might be the ultimate vanity vehicle for Justin Bieber and Katy Perry, but not for Joel Zimmerman, who’s dumped his Twitter into the litter.

The Canadian electronic artist, better known as deadmau5, announced that he has discontinued his Twitter account and will concentrate more on releasing future tracks on Soundcloud, reported Electrojams on Wednesday.

“I’m no longer going to be managing my own Twitter account for deadmau5,” said Zimmerman, who quickly posted seven new tracks onto Soundcloud, all of them downloadable.

“I’ll continue to upload new music to my Soundcloud, and the Twitter account will point you in the right direction for the most recent happenings… but enough’s enough with living on Twitter.”

Eric Zimmerman a.k.a deadmau5

While Zimmerman hinted that his decision was based on personal reasons, it’s good news for Soundcloud founders Eric Wahlforss and Alex Ljung, who since founding the Berlin-based site six years ago, have made it no secret that they want to parallel the success of Twitter. The original premise was to create a more personal and interactive site for artists and music enthusiasts.

“We really think that this is the way music and audio ought to be shared, in the world as we know today,” said Wahlforss to Entrepreneur.

Wahlforss is also yearning for the day when Soundcloud will enjoy a billion users a day. So far, 250 million fans use the site every month. On the other hand, Direct Marketing News reports that Twitter’s traffic tips the scales at more than 500 million tweets a day.

But aside from becoming an online preference for deadmau5, whose recent downloads have accumulated nearly 500,000 listens after only one day, Soundcloud is also quickly developing a reputation for being the launch platform of choice for musical upstarts.

One of its biggest success stories this year includes New Zealand singer Ella Yelich-O’Connor, best-known as Lorde, who initially chose Soundcloud to demo “Royals,” against the advice of her label. The song has since become a top worldwide hit, and, according to Forbes, still receives nearly a million listens a week on the site.