SoundCloud's paid music subscription service is finally here

[Shawn Knight]

SoundCloud’s long-rumored streaming music subscription service has finally arrived. Dubbed SoundCloud Go, the new service comes hot on the heels of licensing agreements with the "big three" major record labels but don’t worry, the company isn’t abandoning its roots.

SoundCloud Go offers listeners an ad-free experience without interruptions as well as the ability to listen offline, even without a cellular or Wi-Fi connection.

In a blog post on the matter, SoundCloud said its new service will initially be available to listeners in the US. The company reassured fans that the indie music scene that has thrived on SoundCloud won’t be going away; instead, it’ll simply be augmented by catalogs from Merlin, Sony, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.

As The Verge correctly highlights, SoundCloud is advertising a colossal catalog of 125 million songs – far more than the 30 million or so boasted by competitors like Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal. The catch, however, is that at least 110 million of those tracks are user-uploaded tracks that are already free to access.

Some quick math tells us that SoundCloud is missing around 15 million “mainstream” tracks. The publication said SoundCloud was still adding tracks but as of today, there are several huge artists missing including Katy Perry, The Beatles, One Direction, Arcade Fire, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, just to name a few.

SoundCloud is offering a free 30-day trial of SoundCloud Go. After that, expect to pay $9.99 per month for continued access (or $12.99 monthly if you sign up through the Apple app store). Subscribers are free to cancel at any time.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/64260-soundcloud-paid-music-subscription-service-finally-here.html

 

[Mister_K]

So many services ... Add them all together and it's in hundreds of dollars a month alone in subscription services. Ridiculous. I guess it comes down to, what you need most.

 

[Tosikko]

Weren't most of these features already available with the artists' permission? Still, it's nice to see SoundCloud compete with the other big players in the scene. It's going to be interesting to see if the service starts off well.

 

[Slappy McPhee]

This right here is how SoundCloud buckled to the labels and their bully ways. I used to be a premium SC member DJ, but got tired of all of the takedown notices yet big name DJs who you sure as hell know didn't get expressed written permission to rebroadcast, etc never had the issue. SoundCloud regardless of what they are saying have now become stooges like the rest. The RIA is too greedy and stupid to realize even this model will eventually fail.