The official SoundCloud company blog, announcing products, subscription plans, music label partnerships, ads, and company changes like layoffs.
HN cites it for official details on plans and creator monetization. Commenters note the paid tiers are confusing and complain about discoverability.
Serial reposters have killed my soundcloud stream. Even artists I like, I offen do not like their taste. Discoverability is also a major problem. Lack of search filters, and arbitrary sorting of results in particular. Hashtag spamming and fake playlist naming to try and pump up play counts are rife.
Don't get me started on the mobile app..
I'd love to see some kind of subreddit like channels built into the platform which could encourage discussion and interaction - between artists especially .. There's so much good random music out there on the platform, but it just feels lost to the ether sometimes. To be honest, the platform which did this best while it lasted was MySpace artist pages.
Edit:
There's so much more they could be doing to become a place for artists. Special curated playlists - pay trendsetters / djs / weirdos to create awesome playlists out of the current content. Something I can set and listen to, look forward to updates on. The fact that Youtube is a better radio than Soundcloud is depressing to me.
Also, something like the RBMA[1] could easily boost the sense of community and respect for the platform. At the moment it just feels like.. plumbing. No love whatsoever. The official soundcloud blog[2] is so sterile and detached from the music they host. If I was them I'd be going insane over Desiigner's Panda[3] becoming No. 1 on Billboard [4] after having such a meteoric rise within the platform - feels like Solja Boy - Crank Dat moment for Soundcloud, yet…
I love SoundCloud, but the premium plan options are surprisingly confusing:
$4.99 - SoundCloud Go
$9.99 - SoundCloud Go+
According to the SoundCloud Blog circa 2016 (and most external reviews), "SoundCloud Go" is the plan with the expanded catalogue:
https://blog.soundcloud.com/2016/03/29/introducing-soundcloud-go/
However, according to the SoundCloud Blog circa 2017, "SoundCloud Go+" is now the plan with the expanded catalogue:
https://blog.soundcloud.com/2017/02/28/introducing-new-soundcloud-go/
Is there some sort of "bait and switch" going on here?
I can only think that SoundCloud purposely shuffled the product names around to make us think that the $4.99 plan includes the expanded catalogue, comparable to Apple Music / Spotify. Or am I mistaken, and the $4.99 plan does include a catalogue comparable to Apple Music / Spotify?
Furthermore, both plans advertise more tracks (120M+ tracks) compared to Apple Music or Spotify (30M tracks), making it even more difficult to reconcile what you're getting. And the $4.99 price point is further complicated by Apple Music, which also offers a $4.99 price point (for students).
The product branding, pricing and positioning here is bonkers for anyone comparison shopping, reading external reviews or simply trying to understand what you get. It's easier to do nothing, and simply continue using the free service (and switch to Spotify from time to time to fill in the blanks).
SoundCloud experimented with something called Ask years ago. I was one of the users they selected to answer spoken questions from the public with my voice.
https://blog.soundcloud.com/2011/05/16/this-week-in-tumblr-5/
Scroll down to Wednesday. Users could have their own branded domain ala Bandcamp or Tumblr, mine was http://ask.hammyhavoc.com. Quite a few celebs of that moment got on board with it.
People hit an 'Ask' button in their browser, it uploaded their voice, I got it, I responded with mine, it got shared out on Twitter, and tagged anyone involved, which led to more interactions. Was pretty cool. Similar to Google's Cameo concept that they just killed off. Had a fancy UX for the era.
The questions and answers got archived on the subdomain and were accessed via SoundCloud's API.
From the official blog:
> At the Premier partner level, creators will have the opportunity to make money from their tracks through advertising.[...] Every time you see or hear an ad, an artist gets paid.
http://blog.soundcloud.com/2014/08/21/introducing-on-soundcloud/
This is huge: Soundcloud has a way better connection to artists/labels than Spotify or Rdio -- which means that the best content will be on Soundlcoud first.
Given that users follow the content, I think it is safe to suggest that Soundcloud will be bigger than Spotify in a few years.
You mean https://blog.soundcloud.com/2016/03/29/introducing-soundcloud-go/
I assume SoundCloud will at some point post other blog content and so in a matter of days/weeks this general link will not go to the right spot.
According to SoundCloud they're aren't going anywhere. https://blog.soundcloud.com/2017/07/14/soundcloud-is-here-to-stay how much we believe that will depend on their next finance report.