Almost a year after SoundCloud launched its streaming music subscription service — dubbed SoundCloud Go — the company has a new offering that’s half the price of its rivals Spotify and Apple.
The new mid-tier plan costs $4.99/month for web and Android users and $5.99 for iOS users. It includes 120 million streaming tracks, offline listening, and no ads.
The higher-priced plan has been renamed SoundCloud Go+, and offers the same experience but with 150 million streaming tracks available, and the ability to skip preview tracks. Web and Android users pay $9.99/month on that plan, while iOS users are slightly higher at $12.99/month.
If you’re wondering why SoundCloud’s music library is so mach larger than the 30 million tracks Apple and Spotify offer, that’s because any user can upload music to the service, Bloomberg points out. Which means ostensibly, someone could enjoy that recording of you singing with your cat, or maybe some thrilling federal appeals court arguments.
Although there were some rumors last fall that Spotify was looking into buying SoundCloud, that deal never went through, sources told Bloomberg. And despite buzz earlier this year that the service would be shutting down, everything is just fine, one executive says.
“We’re not closing down this year,” SoundCloud co-founder Alex Ljung told USA Today. “Absolutely not.”
by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist