Soundcloud’s New Changes Bring Tension To Music Streamers

So if you’ve been following any of my articles than you know what has been going on within the streaming industry between Soundcloud, Apple Music, and several other companies. If you haven’t done so, I would advise you to just because the background info really helps you make sense of this article I’m about to write. So go ahead and read this, this, and this if you take that option!

On March 29th, Soundcloud officially launched their paid subscription service Soundcloud Go. It sounded very promising at first and this was how Soundcloud was trying to step up their game to compete against the much larger Spotify, Apple, and Youtube! With this paid service, you could get offline streaming, ad-free listening, and a larger catalog of music (around 100 million more tracks) thanks to its recent deals with Universal, Warner, and Sony Music.

However, within the first week of the launch, Soundcloud has already reached a numerous amount of problems and complaints. Which is completely normal when a company tries to make a massive shift like this occur for the betterment of their growth, but regardless lets look at some of the things some people have been saying.

Dave Wiskus, of indie rock band Airplane Mode, wrote this letter to Soundcloud in an attempt to voice his frustration with the changes. Wiskus writes, “You’ve been running ads for a while now without paying us. I guess I wrote it off as a temporary measure to keep the lights on. I could accept that. But now you’re charging people for access to our songs, rolling out the red carpet for the major labels, and saying you’ll get around to us eventually… So not only are you getting our music for free and paying us nothing, we’re actually paying you to take it. What an excellent deal. For you.”

Several artist such as Habstrakt and What So Not, to mention a couple, have openly stated on twitter that their songs aren’t even available for people to listen to! Preview locks on a large amount of tracks, a new development that only previews 30 seconds of the track before you’re prompted to purchase a Soundcloud Go subscription, are also a contributing factor in driving away users to other services like Spotify and Apple Music.

As a veteran listener to Soundcloud, I really want to see these guys succeed. Soundcloud has had a lot of difficult events in the past they have had to overcome, including this $35 debt funding they received back at the beginning of the year. If listeners aren’t there to pay for Soundcloud and help them with this debt, then there very well may be no more Soundcloud here pretty soon!