I've been using #SoundCloud for about six years now. When I started, it was two or three years old, barely known and it looked very basic and dull... The platform has changed a lot since, it's got a serious facelift, many features have been introduced over the years and I actually decided to try the Pro plan, just to see what I've been missing...
Before I go on, it would be fair to
say that although I'm playing guitar and other instruments for over two decades and music plays a very important role in my life, I am not a professional musician! I do not make a living from music, I don't make any kind of money from music and I have never released any serious work other than a few bedroom jams. So this is just to make my perspective clear.
How I Got My Stuff On SoundCloud?
A few years ago I started recording myself more often at home and I discovered my passion for recording and for the music production process. As this new passion was developing, I found myself investing a lot more time recording, mixing and producing. As my results were getting better and better, I wanted to share them with a few friends, take them to the car with me and of course get as many people as possible to listen to them and hopefully give me some genuine feedback...
So, I was searching the web for a while for something that might fit and I found MySpace, SoundCloud, Bandcamp and maybe a few others... without too much drilling, I will say that I found SoundCloud the most appealing to me and I chose that platform for my music and I'm still on it today.
What I Use SoundCloud For?
It's funny, but I currently use SoundCloud mainly for two things:
Listening to my own mixes in the car, or on earbuds, using the mobile app
Playing my music on my website, using the embedded web player
What I Hoped SoundCloud Would Be?
Apart from that, I always hope that relevant people will come across my music, really listen and hopefully provide some authentic feedback, but that rarely happens. Normally what would happen is that from time to time people would like one or two of my tracks just to get noticed, so I will hopefully listen to their stuff and "like it back" or follow them back... many times they wouldn't even bother playing the tracks they "like"... now that's not unique to SoundCloud, it's a part of a bigger, darker phenomenon called social media platforms. People just keep counting likes, followers and friends, as if it means anything regarding their music, their lives or whatever they put out there... this is insane to me, but that's off-topic, so let's move on...
SoundCloud used to have a feature called "Groups". It worked something like this; someone would create a group named "XYZ" for example. People who love XYZ would then be able to join the group, listen to tracks posted on that group and post tracks of their own. The idea was, I believe, to let users categorize audio material and allow listeners to subscribe to what they like. That didn't work very well, because people would create tons of overlapping groups, just because they can and because their group is always better than the other 1000 named the same.. so SoundCloud took that feature off the platform. Now they have tags artists can use to categorize their tracks and algorithms to automatically select tracks for different users, based on what they listen to..? while that sounds like a good direction, I can identify two problems with the current product design approach and implementation:
It is unclear how exactly those algorithms work, so you can't really help them help you. Not as an artist and not as a listener.
Many artists put ridiculous tags on their tracks. Many times, I searched for tracks and used the tag filtering feature to try and find some tracks that I might like, only to find out that the results were completely irrelevant.. so I stopped using it.
The end result is something that simply doesn't work for you, no matter who you are. It seems like the SoundCloud algorithm offers tracks similar to mine based on what I liked. But who says that everything I like is similar to the music I create? See what I mean? I just can't understand the logic behind what they are doing and I think I'm not alone...
Another thing that seems odd to me is the different features offered by the different plans. Paying for upload time makes healthy sense. Paying for the ability to use the platform commercially makes even more sense. But I think that paying for the ability to replace my audio file is ridiculous and annoying. I also think that the difference in stats between the two paid plans is pretty stupid. I'm no expert here, but it just doesn't feel right and it feels like they are not sure how to make money off of their own platform...
With what the platform has to offer today, I think SoundCloud currently best serves the following four groups:
People who are not very picky about what they listen to as long as it's free and under some control. These can just follow a bunch of artists and play their stream carelessly. This group doesn't help SoundCloud and it doesn't help artists at all.
Parasites who build their business around the need of young artists to be successful (those who offer you to buy likes, fake followers and such..). That group also doesn't do any significant service to SoundCloud and it doesn't help artists all that much too. It maybe makes artist believe they are making some progress for a while, but won't take an artist to the next level, because I don't think SoundCloud is popular enough to make anything like that happen.
Artists that are already successful enough to be eligible for monetization with SoundCloud Premier. This group is probably the one to which SoundCloud appeals the most. However, I believe that artists in this group don't have to rely on SoundCloud for their growth. I believe that an artist who got over 1k plays on SoundCloud a month, on a single track is probably on his or her way up and SoundCloud can only hope that this artist will continue using the platform at all...
People and companies who need an audio hosting platform for things like podcasting and audio samples sharing (many digital audio companies use SoundCloud to host product demos). For this group SoundCloud is a nice option, but I believe they could manage without it as well and there are probably not enough of them to keep SoundCloud alive.
Conclusion
My conclusion from my personal experience with SoundCloud for the past 7 years or so, is that this platform barely helps artists grow just as much as it barely helps itself grow. I wouldn't be surprised if SoundCloud would disappear in a few years unless it makes significant changes to the platform and maybe to its business model. The funny part is that it will actually make me sad. I love the SoundCloud platform because it's the closest platform to what I would love to see out there, but it is very frustrating to see it stuck for so many years...