Comment by throwaway431234
6 hours ago
SoundCloud is the worst company, so hostile to former paying users! I am a hobbyist songwriter and have posted my rough mixes (Apple's Music Memo app which adds drum and bass automagically with two clicks & then mix it in Garage Band) on my SoundCloud for more then ten years. I signed up for their Artist Pro account and was a member for of such consistently for a few years at $17 a month. Once you cancel they then hold all your music hostage by hiding it and later threat to delete it. Horrid!
A former paying user is not a customer. If you don't pay, why should you receive service? I buy a pizza at this pizza shop every week, but I still don't get free ones.
SoundCloud is European, so most of the dark patterns used by American companies to offer "free" service are not available to them, and they are required by law to actually delete data instead of pretending to delete it.
> I buy a pizza at this pizza shop every week, but I still don't get free ones.
Do they take the leftovers from your fridge when you stop buying?
The analogy was bad. You're effectively renting space in their fridge. In that case, absolutely.
If I haven't bought pizza for two months, they use their magical ray, reach into my fridge and turn the leftovers into mold.
SoundCloud used to be good prior to the redesign.
Recently I decided to evaluate it for serious use and start posting there again, only until their new uploader told me I need to switch to a paid plan, even though I triple-checked I was well within free limits and under my old now unused username I uploaded a lot more (mostly of experimental things I am not that proud of anymore).
It looks like their microservices architecture is in chaos and some system overrides the limits outlined in the docs with stricter ones. How can I be sure they respect the new limits once I do pay, instead of upselling me the next plan in line?
Adding to that things like the general jankiness or the never-ending spam from “get more fake listeners for $$$” accounts (which seem to be in an obvious symbiosis with the platform, boosting the numbers for optics), the last year’s ambiguous change in ToS allowing them to train ML systems on your work, it was enough for me to drop it. Thankfully, it was a trial run and I did not publish any pending releases.
If you still publish on SoundCloud, and you do original music (as opposed to publishing, say, DJ sets, where dealing with IP is problematic), ask yourself whether it is timr to grow up and do proper publishing!
The difference between Artist vs Pro is three hours vs unlimited uploaded music.
So if you had over three hours uploaded, it seems reasonable for them to restrict the service. If you had <= three, then it would a problem.
that just sounds like customer not paying for service not getting the service
The service is freemium, so they had a limited account. Decided to pay for a premium account. And apparently can’t downgrade and get back what they once had.
I'm just guessing, but this:
> and have posted my rough mixes [...] on my SoundCloud for more then ten years
...easily implies >3h of uploads, which is over the free plan limit. If you're over that limit and stop paying, yes, it makes perfect sense that they'd threaten with deletion of some of your existing uploads.
They first hide your songs and as time goes on they start threaten to delete your songs if you dont pay
What should they do instead? spend money continuously holding your music on disk forever even though you aren't paying them for the service? Sounds like they are being cool about it by keeping it around for a while and warning you before deleting it.
5 replies →
I'd pay for Soundcloud, but not sure what I'd get for over free version. It costs more than Apple Music and offering offline nowadays is lol feature.
You can export your entire profile using yt-dlp. Of course you have to do it, when you are still a paying customer.
Why would someone that writes their own songs, mixes in GarageBand, uploads to a 3rd party website need to use yt-dlp to get back the files that they themselves made?
Yes, I'm intentionally victim blaming here. The victim is complaining about a 3rd party site deleting files. Who cares? Why would you have as your only source of your files the copies stored by the 3rd party?
You get a point there, but export is mostly about metadata, eg images and description.
Data loss happens too. Soundcloud may be your only source of your own tracks.
Not only that, the victim is complaining about a paid file storage company deleting the files when the victim stops paying
You mean you never kept your originals but just uploaded and deleted the masters?
Are there any alternatives?
Isn't everyone on YouTube or Bandcamp now for this use case?
YouTube is the domain of Satan, also the name is hilarious - you tube? really? I don't tube thaanks