Last week SoundCloud closed its long in the works deal over rights to Sony Music’s artist catalogue. Now it appears that the deal was literally the very last hurdle in the music streamer’s race to a paid subscription service.
Today SoundCloud officially launched Go, its version of a paid tiered subscription service that gives its 175 million users on-demand access to around 125 million tracks starting at $9.99 a month for U.S. subscribers. In addition to SoundCloud’s pre-existing library, users will now have access to a trove of on-demand premium tracks minus ads and with offline listening capability.
If you opt out of the paid service, you’ll have access to a reduced number of new premium tracks and your listening experience won’t be ad free, SoundCloud’s co-founder and CEO Alexander Ljung told TechCrunch.
“SoundCloud as people know it today with the free service and artists’ presence is all the same, nothing changes,” Ljung said. “SoundCloud Go is an extension beyond that. Those who choose it get the expanded catalog.”
Customers can also expect to see even more paid services hosted by the music streamer in the near future. That includes a special “creators” tier for artists’ uploading content mixing licensed music. This should only enhance the SoundCloud Pro options currently available to artists at two tiers of $7 and $15 per month.
“We’ve gone the long route of aligning with the music industry,” Ljung said while speaking about today’s Go launch and the company’s future subscription plans. “In the future you will start to see more things. We think this will lead to brand new revenue streams in the industry.”