The music streaming wars continue as SoundCloud recently launched its monthly subscription service, SoundCloud Go. Similar to rivals Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal, SoundCloud Go will cost $10 a month and offer a catalogue of tracks from established artists. The added benefit, however, is that Go also includes the slew of remixes, covers and podcasts that make the platform stand out amongst its competitors - and beloved by the creative community and up-and-comers in particular. So, in a world of so many options - is SoundCloud Go worth the $10 subscription?
No, no it’s not. At least right now.
For one, SoundCloud says its library includes 125 million songs, but as The Verge notes, nearly 110 million of those tracks are user-uploaded remixes or covers. In terms of the actual number of songs available by recognized artists, SoundCloud Go boasts only 15 million, which is only half of what Spotify, Apple Music and even the fledgling Tidal offer.
The company is still in the process of adding more songs, but significant names like Katy Perry, Rihanna, Arcade Fire, The Beatles and The Black Eyed Peas are missing from SoundCloud Go. Regardless, it’s unlikely SoundCloud will ever be able to fully catch up with powerful licensing deals by Spotify and Apple. So while it’s great to have access to your favorite sleeper songs from lesser known artists, it’s not really worth it if you can’t switch to the radio bangers we all know and love. For all that, you might as well keep Spotify/Apple and rock out with SoundCloud’s regular free version.
To make matters worse, it’s incredibly hard to use SoundCloud Go in the first place. Because SoundCloud has merged its massive user-generated content with label-based artists, it becomes challenging to sort out what’s what. Engadget details the problem perfectly:
The difference is, when you search for an artist or song title, the results now include songs from the paid subscription mixed in with any free tracks. Unless you have some knowledge of the musician, there's not any way to tell which songs are which. My biggest gripe with SoundCloud Go is how it still relies on a single-track approach to listening. Songs aren't organized into albums, and if you want to listen to a full-length track without having to manually play each song, you'll have to make your own playlist track by track.
Does that sound like it’s worth $10 a month? Definitely not. Of course, SoundCloud Go is still in the beginning stages, but it has tons of work to do. Not having access to Radiohead or Justin Timberlake’s studio albums is unacceptable. And we shouldn’t have to create playlists to store a musician’s album - that’s what an album is for in the first place! Hopefully SoundCloud Go can sort this out, because if executed properly, SoundCloud Go can be a powerful tool used to listen to popular artists and indie up-and-comers in the same place.
