If SoundCloud Disappears, What Happens to Its Music Culture?

$5 a month is the cost of a latte, once a month. Skip Starbucks and pay for the music you listen to.

Are you a student or low income? Fine, have a sliding scale or offer it to them free.

For everyone else, get over yourself and pay the money.

It costs money to run websites like SoundCloud. It is not reasonable to expect anyone to eat the costs of running the website so others can access it for free. It is not unreasonable to expect artists who upload to pay for exposure, for users to pay for access, or for the site to sell advertising "space." Any combination of these monetization mechanisms could preserve the site.

It was a sad day when the tech vessels that brought the music to the masses became the ones who made all the money. We have an entire generation of young people who don't think composers deserve to make a living. "Internet killed the Songwriting Star."

Why doesn't google or Amazon buy it? I listen to several podcasts on it, would hate to see it go.

When I want a burger and fries, I walk into the establishment, order, eat and pay my bill.

As an official geezer - Medicare eligibility being the one requirement - I continue to find new music on internet and college radio stations. If I hear a song that I like/love, guess what....I buy it.

"How do you persuade people who have been using your services free to start paying $5 or $10 a month?" Seriously??? You have the musical world at your feet for 35 or so cents per day - THAT'S PER DAY!! - and people need to be persuaded? Have people become so entitled that they think they're, you know, entitled to free music? If so, I guess colleges and universities will have found another use for their safe spaces.

The entire concept and model of endless data as music is highly destructive to any semblance of quality control.....

It seems to me that all that is needed is a community website that links to songs, not a streaming service: A colleague of a friend of mine composes classical music, and is on Spotify. A few months back I checked his stuff out, and saw that he had 3 listeners this month - so if he can be on Spotify, I guess so can anyone. And of course there is youtube, which won't be shutting down any time soon.

And there really can't be anyone who actually deleted his compositions from his local hard disk drive: These are done in multi track sequencer software, and only the final product is uploaded as an MP3 stream, so the claim that "all this music will be gone..." is just nonsense...

And if you really believe in a streaming site based on communist ideals: Start a Kickstarter campaign to buy it once it fails, then keep it running as a nonprofit like Wikipedia.

Funny thing, Soundcloud did not value music, and put up songs without artist permission. Now they go under, because listeners did not want to pay either. karma...

The internet, like the small storefront, was a great place to 'surf'. All kinds of creative websites from personal to commercial emerged as simple mark up (html) became available. Then programs that enabled WYSIWYG building of web pages became popular. Then wordpress. Then Wiki build it sites. Many are tied into social networks that promote sharing (Tumblr, Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram).

Central repositories of content grew. With the overwhelming amount of content out there people were drawn to places where they could share common interests, often focused on making $ or participating in social bonding algorithms ie. making 'friends'.

Portals that were created with free access were always about eventually capitalizing on audiences "captured" by free content.

Soundcloud is a great way to showcase your music either in the hopes for commercial success or for just allowing anyone to listen to what you do. It's only part of the hard work of getting performances, broadcasts, CD distribution, commissions, etc.

the lesson here is that the peoples whose careers are a result of the platform need to become the protectors, financially and otherwise, of the platform.

tl; dr:

service offering free stuff is successful at everything except making money when it tries to charge for formerly free stuff. millennials cry, but don't care enough to actually pay for stuff and save the company.

did I miss anything?

I compare Soundcloud to college FM radio. It is cutting edge, and where I go to find new music. But unless some benefactor appears, then selling ad space appears needed to keep the lights on.

If Snopes.com can put out a "we need help" notice and garner hundreds of thousands of dollars in two days, why not Soundcloud? or would corporate pride nix the idea?

The economics of the internet were wrong to force content creators to give it away for free. We need to reboot the internet using micropayments as the economic foundation. Value given away for free is just an economic mistake...we know from history that market mechanisms are needed to grow and sustain new infrastructures.

Let's face it-mainstream culture sees any art form which is not profit based as expendable. Maybe it's time to change the default model on which we base the valuation of art forms.

As an artist I lose out on all of the work I've done uploading and arranging my pages. I have nearly 1000 original recordings on my site and if SC closes that will all become lost to the ether of cyberspace. Also they have no tools to help us migrate our material to another more longer lasting site like the Internet Archives. I hope SC can continue; there's serious value here.

Soundcloud has 175mm subscribed - if you can work to get at least $1/month from 1/3 of the subscriber base the revenue is close to $700mm. I would gladly pay $1 per month.