SoundCloud

SoundCloud
Basic information
Founded	2008-10-28
Legal Structure	Private
Industry	Entertainment
Official website	https://soundcloud.com/

SoundCloud is a music streaming platform founded in 2007. The SoundCloud website was made public in October 2008.

Consumer impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the conduct towards users of the product (if applicable):

User Freedom
User Privacy
Business Model
Market Control

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Freedom

SoundCloud allows artists to enable direct downloads on their tracks. Listeners of any membership tier can use direct downloads on the website.^[1]

Business model

SoundCloud has three membership tiers for listeners. Free, which is ad-supported, Go, which is ad-free, and Go+, which is ad-free and gives access to locked songs not available with other subscriptions.^[2]
SoundCloud has three membership tiers for artists. Without a paid subscription, SoundCloud limits the hours of music which can be uploaded to an account. The upload limit for the Basic package is is 2 hours, 3 for Artist, and Artist Pro users have no limit.^[2]

Incidents

Generative AI

In January 2024, SoundCloud announced integration with AI music tools Fadr, Soundful and Voice-Swap, allowing users to directly post AI generated content to the platform. ^[3]

In May 2025, an article published by Futurism accused SoundCloud of updating their Terms of Service to allow all content on the platform to be used to train generative AI.^[4] SoundCloud later clarified that it's use of AI was strictly to provide “personalized recommendations, content organization, fraud detection, and improvements to content identification”, not to train generative AI models.^[5]

References

↑ McCall, Vivian (2021-01-14). "How to download SoundCloud songs from the website onto your computer, or from the mobile app with SoundCloud Go". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 SoundCloud. "What type of subscription is for me?". Archived from the original on 2025-07-27.
↑ Paine, Andre. "SoundCloud integrates with assistive AI tools to enable direct uploads for artists". MusicWeek. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16.
↑ "SoundCloud Quietly Updated Their Terms to Let AI Feast on Artists' Music". Futurism. 2025-05-09. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16.
↑ Corcoran, Nina (2025-05-14). "SoundCloud Updates AI Policy in Terms of Use After Backlash". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16.

[1] McCall, Vivian (2021-01-14). "How to download SoundCloud songs from the website onto your computer, or from the mobile app with SoundCloud Go". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16.

[:0-2] 2.0 ^2.1 SoundCloud. "What type of subscription is for me?". Archived from the original on 2025-07-27.

[3] Paine, Andre. "SoundCloud integrates with assistive AI tools to enable direct uploads for artists". MusicWeek. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16.

[4] "SoundCloud Quietly Updated Their Terms to Let AI Feast on Artists' Music". Futurism. 2025-05-09. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16.

[5] Corcoran, Nina (2025-05-14). "SoundCloud Updates AI Policy in Terms of Use After Backlash". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 2025-08-16.

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