What is Soundcloud and What Can it Do For Me?

Soundcloud is a cool music streaming service that brings together musicians, fans and curators. It isn’t just for listening to new music though. As a musician or producer, Soundcloud provides somewhere to publish your work, gather fans and create a following. As a fan, you get to follow your favorites, discover genuinely new artists and try out any kind of music, all in one place.

What is Soundcloud?

Soundcloud is a web-based subscription service to listen to upload original music. It was launched in 2007 and has steadily gathered a raft of artists and creators into its platform, along with millions of listeners.

There are two types of subscription for a listener, a free version that allows you up to 120 minutes of listening per day and Soundcloud Go at $9.99 per month. Premium gives you full access to its 135 million plus tracks, you can listen offline and is ad-free.

As a creator, you have a free account where you can upload up to 180 minutes of music, a Pro account which increases that to over 6 hours and a Premier account that also includes revenue sharing and a huge number of tracking tools and analytics.

How to use Soundcloud

To use Soundcloud, you have to sign up. Click create account on any Soundcloud page and fill in the usual details or link to it with your Facebook or Google+ account. If you’re joining as a listener, that’s it unless you want to fill in your profile a little more. If you’re joining as a musician or producer, you now need to create your brand page.

Uploading tracks comes next and using the ‘Upload’ button next to your avatar is where you do that. Add the track, a description, a buy button if you want to make money and save it.

Listening on Soundcloud

Once logged it, finding audio on the platform is easy. You can browse the charts on the front page or use the Category radio button. Click the button, select your genre and browse the listings that are generated. You can then listen to any track and comment on it, mark it as a favorite, add it to a playlist or share it on social media.

The most powerful of the available options is the playlist function. Any music platform that has a playlist makes it easier and more valuable as a resource for a listener. I use playlists to create mood music. I have a playlist for the gym, one for walking the dog, one for relaxing, one for when I travel and one for when I want energy. Given the 135 million-odd tracks to choose from, creating a playlist is easy!

Finally, the social side of Soundcloud comes into its own if you love a particular artist and they have their own group. Here is a bunch of like-minded people interested in the same thing. You can chat, share tracks, ideas or whatever you like within reason.

Soundcloud is a huge music streaming platform with millions of tracks and millions of users. For note very much per month, you get access to a huge music collection with the benefit of social. Well worth a try!