SoundCloud Introduces $5 Subscriptions

Just this week, streaming music service provider SoundCloud has decided to start offering subscriptions at only $5, basically granting music listeners the opportunity to pay less for most of the same features also included in the regular $10 subscription. The main difference? At $5, users will not be able to fully access the complete music catalog.

Nicknamed by many as the YouTube of audio, SoundCloud first introduced an all you can listen to music streaming offering in 2016 for $10 a month. With that move, the company essentially transformed from an all free library of tracks uploaded by its own users into a paid subscription service. Having said that, SoundCloud is still facing concerns of bankruptcy in 2017 if its sales do not improve.

In more ways than one, SoundCloud’s set up is different from other streaming music service providers. Much of its foundation is built on millions of recordings made by its users. Some of the uploaded material has since become popular, like Chance the Rapper’s mixtape (which was honored by the Grammies). This is what made SoundCloud so appealing, attracting 175 million listeners on a monthly basis. For context, music streaming giant Spotify has announced that it had breached the 100 millionth mark in terms of the number of active listeners back in June of last year.

So what exactly can you get from SoundCloud for $5? The cheaper option takes away all advertising and even lets people listen to music offline, just like the $10 subscription. Subscribers of the $5 option, however, will not be able to listen to all of the millions of songs stockpiled by SoundCloud. What they will hear instead are 30 second previews of the tracks restricted only to $10 subscribers. By any measure, a $5 option is hardly unique. Other service providers like Pandora and Amazon also offer lower priced subscriptions, with various caveats, depending on which brand.

As for its $10 subscription, SoundCloud has since renamed it to SoundCloud Go+ (the $5 option is named SoundCloud Go). For the record, the SoundCloud Go+ option offers unlimited access to 150 million songs, including millions of officially licensed tracks. The more affordable SoundCloud Go option, meanwhile, offers access to 120 million tracks, with some songs (especially those from the biggest recording stars) locked. The free, ad supported version remains the same.

The new $5 plan is already made available in markets such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, France, New Zealand, Canada, and Germany.