Soundcloud: "You Tube of Audio"

When it comes to social media you cannot explore and actively use every new company, platform, app, etc.   I like to think though that I do a pretty good job of staying up on the most popular or the ones that seem the most beneficial to me.  One of latest social media platforms, SoundCloud, is one that I have not used yet but I've heard about it, read articles about it and seen many friends tying their Facebook accounts to their SoundCloud accounts.

So, what exactly is SoundCloud?  At it's core it's a social media platform similar to Instagram for playing mp3 audio files.  At first thought, you think there has to be something that already fills this niche.   The reality is though that there really isn't which is surprising that the niche stayed unoccupied for so long.  With SoundCloud artists, particularly Indie and upcoming artists, upload new songs, jam sessions, songs their actively working on, etc to the news feed.  Similar to other social media platforms you can follow the artists or non-artists who are uploading mp3's based on your musical preferences.   You can also be a passive user, meaning you can just follow other users and not post anything.

   

With over 250 million users this is the largest music platform of it's kind.  Personally, I'm a huge music fan and listen to 3-4 hours worth of music per day.  I'm actually embarrassed that I'm not one of the 250 million users because clearly their is some significant value being gained from all that are apart of it.  The reality is though sometimes you don't start using a new social media platform simply because of the limited time you have available.  Even though I've heard of SoundCloud now for close to a year I'm a loyal and paying subscriber of Spotify.  

After doing some research on SoundCloud for this blog post I certainly can see the value in this and it's a different value that Spotify currently provides.  The primary reasons being that it's a free service to use and being first to find new artists/songs is something I take pride in.   Of course, I listen to the mainstream stuff as well but finding new songs and groups takes work and that music becomes more special to you.  If this new platform helps me become more efficient and effective in fulfilling what music does for me then I think they just may have a new loyal user.   250,000,001 users it is!