1. They haven't updated their iOS app seemingly in years. It lacks basic controls and makes it impossible to listen to more than a single song at a time.
2. The really shitty "artist engagement" sites that force you to follow 20 other social media accounts in order to get a download. I know this isn't Soundcloud directly, but they're the ones letting artists link off to these basically spam services through a button that promises a direct download. They could have easily required you to follow the artist before downloading directly to solve at least part of this problem.
3. Music discovery is absolute trash. Discovery on a platform like SC is even more important than a place like Spotify because there is so much underground talent that should be listened to. This was the entire point of SC and they largely failed at that.
4. I have seen countless artists on twitter calling out SC for taking down their own songs from their own accounts for copyright strikes. It also seems like their ability to work with artists in general is just utter garbage.
I'll add (5) - They haven't fixed a bug in their 'Spotlight' editing widget. Trying to drag and drop to re-sort your 5 highlighted Spotlight tracks in your profile always crashes Chrome, and has done so for years, despite me (and many others) filing multiple bug reports.
I actually liked SoundCloud a lot, before they introduced SoundCloud Go. It wasn't perfect, but since it was free I didn't have an issue to live with the flaws.
But they really burned all the goodwill they had with me and others when they introduced SoundCloud Go. Here's a list of the "features" of SoundCloud Go [0] and why it's difficult to accept them as a user:
1. Access the world’s largest music streaming catalog, a constantly expanding mix from established and emerging artists
It's not clear to me that any of this monthly subscription is going to the artists I like (e.g. like Patreon). So, I'm paying 10 Euros per month for you to run some servers while having a much smaller library than other streaming services?
I do not work in the legal or music industry, but it's my understanding that since most content on SoundCloud is indie remixes, they shouldn't have to pay royalties to the record labels because the content is not copyrighted by the record labels (legally remixes would fall under fair use). So unless I'm very wrong in this impression, SoundCloud bent over to the record labels because they didn't want to be sued out of existence like Grooveshark?
2. Full access to all 150M+ tracks
Versus 120M on a free account. I highly doubt this number, since after introducing SoundCloud Go, a lot of tracks from artists I listened to became "Previews" of 20-30 seconds long and you had to subscribe to SoundCloud Go to listen to the full song. It was pitched as a subscription to access additional/premium content, but this is not what it felt like as a user, seeing songs go from free to pay walled.
3. Offline listening
You updated the Android app to remove the caching option, where previously you could select 100% and have the app entirely cache the song offline, assuming you had listened to it at least once before. I used this feature to cache gigabytes of music on my phone so that once it was listened to on WiFi, I could go out and not consume my 3G data while listening to the playlist. That was a huge "fuck you" to users.
4. No ads
Install an ad blocker in your browser and never hear ads anyway.
5. Millions of premium SoundCloud Go+ tracks
Here's how Engadget covered the announcement:
"the subscription plan costs $10 a month and includes a library of additional content as well as the usual remixes, emerging artists and podcasts." [1]
Given what I've said in #2, this was not the user experience.
---
I'm sorry to the talented people who lost their jobs today, but I don't feel any sadness for SoundCloud. This hurt is entirely self inflicted. For any PM's reading, here's how to burn your reputation with users in 3 easy steps:
1. Introduce an expensive subscription service at the same price as your competitors, but don't offer as much content, and don't publicize that any of the money is going toward your content creators
2. Hobble your existing free product to force people to the paid service
3. Don't push any meaningful new features or notable bugfixes to your website or app in years (e.g. needing Flash to play a song, HTML5 which eats up 100% CPU so you can display... something)
Now I use Mixcloud. Not better for individual songs, but great for music discovery given all the podcasts/shows available. Their app is a bit meh, but there aren't any ads, and their website doesn't require Flash and doesn't use lots of CPU. Best of all: they've yet to screw over users by introducing a paid option.
Mixcloud Founder here, thanks for the support and if you ever have issues reach out. We're working hard on the app, but we're a super small team, so bear with us!
> Mixcloud Founder here, thanks for the support and if you ever have issues reach out.
Wow, awesome! Never thought anyone from either SoundCloud or MixCloud would read this.
Short list of improvements I would love to see:
1. If an artist uploads a tracklist for their mix, support seeking directly to a track within the mix (similar to a cue file) via the app or website.
2. Introduce a better way to seek in the app. When the mix is 1-2 hours long and all I have is a seek bar the width of my phone screen and a fat thumb, it's very difficult to seek to somewhere specific in the podcast. Something like 10 sec forward and 30 sec back buttons would already be a huge win.
3. Sometimes the mobile app plays the mix but all you get is silence. This seems to happen most frequently in the middle of a mix when there are connectivity issues. Closing the app and opening it again when you have better connectivity still results in blank sections of the mix. Super weird and very annoying!
But otherwise, yeah, please keep it up! Mixcloud has basically replaced the other music discovery services for me because it's got the content I want and it just works.
No. Remixes are a derivative work. They are a copyright violation without permission from the owner. Fair use would be satire or an excerpt for the purpose of commentary. Remixing is just more involved sampling and Vanilla Ice can tell you how well that works out without paying the piper.
Well, that's good to know and also super shitty. I guess like many other services, once they got the attention of the recording industry it was only a matter of time until they were forced into a licensing agreement.
Your points are understandable. But what would your plan be to keep the doors open? They need to make money somehow. Not being sarcastic, am genuinely interested.
I'm a heavy SC user, listen to my "manually curated" (for lack of better words) timeline in background for hours a day (using global shortcuts in chrome to skip what I don't like), but what if I want to buy a song I like? I have to give my money to Bandcamp!
Also, 10 bucks to remove ads is ridiculous, their catalogue is tiny and with overwhelmingly obscure/indie music (at least for me), AND I have no idea if the artists will actually get any of it! Cut it in half, have some sort of revenue share and I'm in.
> Why would you buy a song you like if you can listen to it for free?
Because you want to support the indie artist/label so they keep making music you like?
> Also, 10 bucks to remove ads is ridiculous, their catalogue is tiny and with overwhelmingly obscure/indie music (at least for me), AND I have no idea if the artists will actually get any of it! Cut it in half, have some sort of revenue share and I'm in.
100% this. I'm not going to pay that much just to remove ads and especially if that money is going toward big record labels instead of the indie artists/labels I actually listen to.
1. They haven't updated their iOS app seemingly in years. It lacks basic controls and makes it impossible to listen to more than a single song at a time.
2. The really shitty "artist engagement" sites that force you to follow 20 other social media accounts in order to get a download. I know this isn't Soundcloud directly, but they're the ones letting artists link off to these basically spam services through a button that promises a direct download. They could have easily required you to follow the artist before downloading directly to solve at least part of this problem.
3. Music discovery is absolute trash. Discovery on a platform like SC is even more important than a place like Spotify because there is so much underground talent that should be listened to. This was the entire point of SC and they largely failed at that.
4. I have seen countless artists on twitter calling out SC for taking down their own songs from their own accounts for copyright strikes. It also seems like their ability to work with artists in general is just utter garbage.