Soundcloud displays the general industry trend of enshittification. Back years ago, Soundcloud was one of the places where non-name artists and music hobbyists could display their wares. Later, Soundcloud came up with the idea that they could extract money from the artists that create their product. The idea was, you (the artist) pay us to store your music, and in turn, we’ll promote your music to our subscribers. We’ll also allow you unlimited upload space. And we’ll monetize your plays.
Well, in the beginning that worked. Music I uploaded 6 years ago would get an immediate spike of 300-500 plays. But soon, that number started to drop until the play spike was less than 100 plays. And there was a payola scheme in there because as soon as I terminated my Artist Pro account because they never paid me a dime for my monetized songs and plays were getting less and less, plays got even lower.
Now, I don’t even advertise that Soundcloud is a platform with my music, same as Shittify, the champion of enshittification.
