SoundCloudReviews of soundcloud.com

First the good: Added 500+ followers in last 9 months 335k plays in last 9 months monthly royalty payments Amplify feature excellent Now the bad: bad/lazy support. No issues resolved (and there's been many issues) except for recent late payment issue(resolved). Original tracks get blocked due to copyright for upload even though system has accepted them before. Original tracks get blocked for monetization even though monetization accepted on previous upload. No response when asked about fake/bot accounts Copyright scanner blocks royalty free samples. Desktop artwork must be uploaded per track, not bulk. Closing of other paid/promotional options. Amplify feature doesn't always work even though set on upload. Have to manually amplify each track. Soundcloud is very important to my career and i've had great results which i do appreciate. But the above problems cause continual headaches. I work very hard wit my soundcloud channel but the above issues cause countless wasted hours of my time. Bottom line is my experience with support doesn't really reflect that they care, hence writing this review. SC offers vinyl selling but ive gone direct with elastic stage since i've had such bad support experience and dont want to rely on them further. 'Come On Soundcloud, get it together!'

The incessant ads without the paid subscription makes this platform nearly unusable -- however, some of the remixes available on the platform are insanely good (and cannot be found anywhere else e.g. Spotify, Youtube). That might be SoundCloud's only redeeming quality.

It USED to be a great website, now its full of dark patterns and anti-user design choices. For instance: You can no longer see all of an artists tracks from the mobile version of the website, only featured and popular tracks, why? I dont know... I assume they want to force people to use the app, but why? This seriously limits the actual usefulness of soundcloud for an artist. On top of that its a battle to release tracks through their distribution system without getting your content denied for whatever bogus reasons and the chatbot support is annoying and hallucinating like it was on acid. I used a CC0 licensed work for my album cover and I had to spend 45 minutes talking to a gaslight-bot 3000 and when it finally send me onwards it took days before any action, and I didnt get a "We are sorry - We messed up" message or anything, my track just suddenly got accepted even though it was in draft mode - I didnt wish to publish it before updating the audio file... If you want to keep artists then I think its paramount that soundcloud stops using "dark patterns" to force app downloads. You should aim to make the app convienient if you want app users, not making the website UNCONVENIENT. This WILL just lead to users jumping ship as soon as another, better, well-funded alternative appears. I hope someone at soundcloud reads this criticism, but I doubt it.

I use SoundCloud from time to time, but the app has become less stable lately. Tracks sometimes stop playing when I switch to another app, and a few playlists refuse to load on the first try. The idea is great, but the performance feels inconsistent.

Ive been using Soundcloud for about 5 years. I appreciate access to new artists and music. I decided to upgrade to artist subscription last year because I wanted to update my tracks and now regret it. The platform actually became worse, not better, after I paid for a subscription. More annoying ads, less engagement and now every time I log on I get a cookies opt in notices, which was not happening when I had the free acct. Serious disincentive to use the app or continue my subscription. Such a bummer that soundcloud could not figure out a way to scale without driving users away. Oh well Silas

I have been a long user but recent disappointing experience with them due to poor customer service, despite the platform being good for artists.

Soundcloud for Musicians continually denies applications for Monetization due to the use of AI. Their Monetization Terms of Service (MToS) states that: "...recordings that are exclusively (100% GenAI) computer-generated through the use of artificial intelligence.." are disallowed. This is understood. However, no matter what proof you provide that you are not using AI 100%, they continually deny monetization. More annoying is that they do this inconsistently. SoundCloud last week wrote to me and stated that "We can only approve content that is 100% original." Furthermore, they go on to state "We utilize this phrase to indicate a production that has been recorded and composed entirely without the incorporation of any samples or sounds obtained from sample purchasing platforms such as Splice or any other similar sites." This is not what the MToS states. Under the MToS agreement, it is possible to have some AI generated track content as long as its not "exclusively" generated by AI. In reality, SC continues to reject track monetization due to the use of AI, even when I produce paperwork and waivers to show I have the rights and permissions to monetize. These rejections are clearly inconsistent with SoundCloud MToS and leaves creatives confused as to what the rules really are. One other source of confusion and frustration is that SC reject tracks with the word "remix" or even "mix" in the title. For EDM producers, this is a normal nomenclature to use and what is really ironic is that the remixes are remixes of producers own tracks! This is another "rule" that is inconsistently applied. And lastly (but not least) the support bot that they use has no real use other than to raise a support ticket and when responses are made to SC's support emails, they disappear into a black hole, never to elicit a response back. It would appear that difficult questions just get "forgotten" or binned. The whole support question needs a top to bottom rethink and redesign with more resources put into it to make creatives experience much smoother, with greater transparency and consistency with the rules.

I write this with a heavy heart as I love SoundCloud, the platform has been great to me over the years and has really helped in my music career, unfortunately my recent customer experience has been very poor and will probably make me think twice about renewing my Pro subscription, all I wanted was some simple help with removing a faulty upload, I must have tried to reach out via the customer support chat about 8 times and every time I get fobbed off or nobody contacts me back to the point I have given up and left the faulty post up. Unless SoundCloud gets a grip I will be moving to Mixcloud full time