There are many subscription services for music-lovers to choose from. The most popular are Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. Another contender is entering the arena to make the choice even harder. Today Soundcloud announced its ad-free paid tier called Soundcloud Go.
Soundcloud Go will cost $10 US a month and offer ad-free offline playback on mobile devices. It’ll also allow artists to choose whether to give away tracks for free or reserve them for paying customers — an option not allowed by Spotify, which depends on having quality free music to draw in prospective paying customers.
Soundcloud began as a free streaming service offering songs from well-known musicians such as Kanye West to up-and-coming DJs and local indie stars. As acts like Taylor Swift removed their catalogs from services offering their music for free, Soundcloud Go allows revenue to be earned for the musician and Soundcloud.
Spotify boasts 30 million paid subscribers, Apple Music 10 million, and Tidal 3 million. Soundcloud currently has 175 million monthly listeners. The question is will the majority of these million listeners turn into paid customers? While Soundcloud has many individual tracks, where it is lacking is in actual albums. Playlists can be created to piecemeal entire albums from your favorite artists.
Soundcloud is offering a free 30-day trial of Soundcloud Go at soundcloud.com/go.
