Jolley FrankieIf you’re tired of switching radio stations in search of good music, and your favorite playlist in the player has been heard to the point of disgust, try the SoundCloud service. Here you will surely find new and, undoubtedly, pleasant musical experiences.
Virtually all online music services can be divided into two categories. In the first freely settled Apple Music, Google Play Music, Spotify, Deezer, which have huge catalogs of legal music, pay all the necessary royalties, but for full use require users to make a small monthly fee. In the second category are dozens of small sites, which have a very limited selection of music, not always legal, but completely free.
SoundCloud occupies a place roughly in the middle; it has successfully combined the advantages of both large groups. Let’s look at how this is possible.
The SoundCloud service was originally launched as an online platform for independent musicians to publish their work, share experiences with peers, and interact with fans. To this end, each registered user is given the opportunity to upload up to three hours of their own music, with the possibility of increasing this value by purchasing a paid account.
Thanks to the efforts of its founders, one of whom is a professional sound producer and the other one is a musician, SoundCloud set a rather high standard of quality from the very beginning and managed to avoid turning into a usual music dump full of low-quality and pirated content. An interesting community of independent musicians was formed around the service, and its catalog quickly filled with unique content. It is not surprising, therefore, that just a few years after its launch, SoundCloud cheerfully reported ten million subscribers. Now the service is used by more than 175 million monthly listeners.
So what attracts all these people to SoundCloud?
First of all, here you can find absolutely unique music, which you will not hear anywhere else. A convenient filtering system allows you to sift songs by artist, genre, time of addition and popularity. Yes, there are also likes, through which users express their attitude to the tracks. Thus, the main judges in SoundCloud are the listeners, and you can’t cheat them.
Even if you don’t have much confidence in young talent, SoundCloud will still find something to interest you. The fact is that the lion’s share of content here is tracks that are remixes of popular songs and tunes. Sometimes the remixes are so talented that they are as much fun to listen to as the original tracks.
And the third component to SoundCloud’s success is the large number of mixes that can serve as a great soundtrack for reading, programming, studying, strength training, jogging, and more. If you’re looking for the perfect background music for literally any activity, this is the place to go.
As I wrote above, listening to tracks on SoundCloud is free and doesn’t even require you to register. However, if you take a few minutes and create an account, you’ll be able to add the tracks you like to your favorites, make your own playlists, and subscribe to updates from your favorite musicians. In addition, you’ll be able to get recommendations of the service based on your listening history, explore playlists of other users, join groups, share your favorite music in social networks and much more.
Getting started with SoundCloud is easy. Just open the main page and enter a genre, a musician or even your mood into the search bar. In the ensuing scattering of tracks you’re sure to find something that will make you say “Wow!”, add the artist to your favorites, and quickly put together a track list to listen to. And after that, you’ll just have to install one of the mobile apps of this service. After all, you won’t be able to part with this music even for a minute.