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I just listened to two songs on Soundcloud, and was required to listen to 30 seconds of advertisements before each songs would play. When I clicked the information icon on the ad, the popup said: Why ads?
Every time you see or hear an ad, artists get paid. They're how we keep SoundCloud free for listeners.
Want to lose the interruptions? Go ad-free and continue to support your favorite artists with SoundCloud Go. I'm paying SoundCloud to host my songs, so it's not "free" to me. And whatever "artist" is getting paid when advertisements pop up on my songs, it's not me. I've not marked any of my songs for monetization, but that's not stopping SoundCloud from collecting fees from advertisers.  I hate the idea of breaking links I've posted, but I also hate that someone has to listen to an advertisement if they want to listen to my song. And that's doubly true when I'm paying to host it and someone else is getting making money off it. Time to start looking for somewhere else to host my music.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Hmmm... I host songs on Soundcloud but I never listen to anyone else on the platform. I know that I get listeners but I haven't seen a dime of revenue. My Soundcloud renewal notice showed up in my email today. I think I need to do some investigating.
Thanks for the heads up!
BIAB 2026 Audiophile Mac
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Digital Performer11, Logic, Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScore/Notion/Overture
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...
Time to start looking for somewhere else to host my music. Are you familiar with DistroKid? Worth checking out. DistroKid From their website: DistroKid is the easiest way for musicians to get music into Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Tidal, TikTok, YouTube, and more. Unlimited uploads, keep 100% of your earnings, and more features than any other music distributor. Millions of musicians rely on DistroKid. Pay only €20.99 to upload unlimited albums & songs for a year and get in stores 10-20x faster than any other distributor. [EDIT: It's nice that their website recognizes that I'm in the EU and switches to Euro pricing. Being an American expat, I know how to read that price, even though the proper way to write it is 20,99 € (we use a comma instead of a decimal point). Still, they're the best independent music distributor I'm currently aware of.]
Last edited by TheMaartian; 10/31/24 01:05 AM.
ThinkPad i9 32GB RAM 7TB SSD; Win11 Pro; RME Fireface UCX II; BiaB 2026 Ultra
Studio Pro 8; Tonalic Studio 1; Reaper v7; Bitwig Studio 6; Melodyne Studio 5
Gig Performer 5; NI S61 MK3; Focal Shape 65; Beyerdynamic DT 880 & 770
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Hmmm... I host songs on Soundcloud but I never listen to anyone else on the platform. I know that I get listeners but I haven't seen a dime of revenue. My Soundcloud renewal notice showed up in my email today. I think I need to do some investigating. You'll need to jump through some hoops to get any of that ad revenue. See: https://artists.soundcloud.com/monetization/soundcloudBut don't worry - if you don't go that route, they'll happily monetize your tracks without your approval. Under their privacy rules, they state: We process your data to deliver content or advertisements and measure the delivery of such content or advertisements to extract insights about our website. We share this information with our partners on the basis of consent. However, there's no option to not consent to: - Deliver and Present Advertising Content - 524 partners
- Match and combine data from other data sources - 364 partners
- Link different devices - 331 partners
- Identify devices based on information transmitted automatically - 501 partners
That's an obscene amount of data sharing "on the basis of consent".
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Are you familiar with DistroKid? Worth checking out. Thanks! I've also been building a list as I listen to people's songs. 
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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I switched over to ReverbNation from Soundcloud for that very reason, can't stand all the ads on Soundcloud. Distrokid is good if you want to get on Spotify and iTunes, etc.
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The ads are avoidable. I believe that there are mechanisms available to "Block Ads".
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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Can't tell you how many times I've clicked on a link to a Soundcloud tune and thought I was listening to an avant-garde opening song sequence when it was in fact an ad...
DC Ron
BiaB Audiophile
Presonus Studio One
ASUS I9-12900K DAW, 32 GB RAM
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Too many guitars (is that a thing?)
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The ads are avoidable. I believe that there are mechanisms available to "Block Ads". I just got a new computer, and am still in the process of configuring it. So I haven't got my ad blocker set up yet. On my old computer, I had to open any page that used SoundCloud in Private mode, because the player refused to work. I presume it had something to do with my ad blocker. And then I'd have to remind SoundCloud not to sell my personal information. I just don't see the point of paying $150 per year to allow them to provide a terrible experience for people wanting to hear my music, and then pay more for the privilege of hearing similarly posted music without ads. I had foolishly assumed that ads were only being played when people chose to monetize their songs, but that's not the case. After all, they're saying that "artists" are being paid when ads are displayed. But the reality is that Soundcloud is getting paid. That's not the service that I signed up for. Yeah, I said this was a rant. 
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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I use +++ Bandlab +++ . They have free and subscription membership plans. You can collaborate, store and share tracks, download loops, master and a few other things for free. The subscription membership adds licensing and distribution services. FYI, Bandlab recently bought ReverNation and is integrating it into their other services. Take a look.
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I just don't see the point of paying $150 per year to allow them to provide a terrible experience for people wanting to hear my music, and then pay more for the privilege of hearing similarly posted music without ads. David, exactly. It's just ridiculous. I only signed up for paid subscription so I can have more space for my stuff than free accounts offer, not to become "famous". I agree, these ads injected in content of paid accounts are unacceptable. I have my own website, but the ease of uploading to soundcloud got me lazy. With these ads I am considering switching back to my own site, or maybe even my own mini server. While I am a huge fan of Cakewalk, I can't recommend BandLab at this point in time. Their murky business of offering subscription only (new) Sonar, took away 90% of my trust in that company. Things might change, but judging of what was happening in the past 8+ months and their aggressive tactics of shutting down every public thread that even politely/remotely talks about negative aspects of subscriptions... In my view nothing will stop them doing same as SoundCloud did or similar. Enforce limit, make it a paid only subscription product, inject ads, etc. ----------------------------------------------- Would be nice if PGM offered their own basic music hosting for customers for a small fee.
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Welcome to 2025 where the internet/media advertising has become more than irritating. Ads bombard me at every turn. I just stopped using SoundCloud. The same issue exists with youtube.
I am not sure there is any real solution to the problem. Well, there is but who would want to go back to interacting live, with no AC, and moving a real B3 around...lol
All this is a bit like driving your car around in Rome. Yes, driving there is an irritating pain in the butt but the view out the window is worth it I guess.
For me, I can not tolerate all this on an ongoing basis. I have to escape on my boat where I mostly only have to deal with the weather.
Cheers,
Billy
“Amazing! I’ll be working with Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, and Buddy Rich, and you’re telling me it’s not that great of a gig?
“Well…” Saint Peter, hesitated, “God’s got this girlfriend who thinks she can sing…”
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I’ve never seen a single ad on SC in a decade of use. I assume it’s my top level subscription … which I also like as I can replace a song without any other changes to song data. FWIW I also subscribe to ad free YT. It’s well worth a few extra bucks a month for us as we watch music on YT every evening.
Bud
Our albums and singles are on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Pandora and more. If interested search on Janice Merritt. Thanks! Our Videos
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I've never tried to monetize or anything like that. My account is paid. $120'ish a year. I use it to share with family, friends and Showcase. Sometimes I want to check mix in the car and use phone to stream. I do get "ads" listening to my own stuff.
I wrote to SC support - questioning these ads on paid account. Ticket opened on November 6th. On November 21st I received this reply:
"Hi there,
Thanks for getting in touch with us at SoundCloud.
We’d like to inform you that at the moment we’re experiencing a higher than usual number of requests that unfortunately is preventing us from responding as quickly as we’d like to - we apologize for the inconvenience.
If your matter has been resolved in the meantime, please consider this ticket as closed.
If you still need help with your request, please reply to this email and we’ll be happy to get back to you as soon as possible. Please note that this may still take a while."
I am looking at other options or just hosting my own tunes, I don't think these crooks who failed to reply in 22 (!!!) days deserve my money.
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I've never tried to monetize or anything like that. My account is paid. $120'ish a year. I use it to share with family, friends and Showcase. Sometimes I want to check mix in the car and use phone to stream. I do get "ads" listening to my own stuff.
I wrote to SC support - questioning these ads on paid account. Ticket opened on November 6th. On November 21st I received this reply:
"Hi there,
Thanks for getting in touch with us at SoundCloud.
We’d like to inform you that at the moment we’re experiencing a higher than usual number of requests that unfortunately is preventing us from responding as quickly as we’d like to - we apologize for the inconvenience.
If your matter has been resolved in the meantime, please consider this ticket as closed.
If you still need help with your request, please reply to this email and we’ll be happy to get back to you as soon as possible. Please note that this may still take a while."
I am looking at other options or just hosting my own tunes, I don't think these crooks who failed to reply in 22 (!!!) days deserve my money. We put in an issue help request in May and didn’t hear for two months after a msg like yours. And then they asked if it had been resolved. 🤷♂️ Bud
Our albums and singles are on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Pandora and more. If interested search on Janice Merritt. Thanks! Our Videos
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I don't see/hear ads on YT or SC but I do run two ad blocking programs.I don't pay for pro accounts etc.
I don't monetize & don't have the option due to low play rates.
Recently a song I posted on YT run into the 1.6k plays range then suddenly stopped.
YT had randomly selected it to promote and attached ads. Just before it reached the limit at which they'd have to pay me some of the ad revenue they stopped promoting the song and moved onto someone else to repeat the process. This is a common occurrence across all platforms. They are all, in the end, using our "content" and data to make money - that is why they exist. Soundclick was okay for a while as was My Space. Eventually greed becomes unbridled and the platforms inevitably fade orcollapse. I'm not completely sanguine about it all: I don't use cloud storage or similar - except WeTransfer, with an absurdly short four days before link death, but again it's a freebie version and I don't want my stuff on there for long.
Last edited by rayc; 11/29/24 02:00 PM.
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe
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Would be nice if PGM offered their own basic music hosting for customers for a small fee. Now this is good out-of-the-box thinking that has potential . . . of course with no ads.
https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677BiaB 2026 Windows For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.
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Would be nice if PGM offered their own basic music hosting for customers for a small fee. Now this is good out-of-the-box thinking that has potential . . . of course with no ads. Slightly O/T but I think one of the concerns is that PGM might be held liable if they were found to be hosting pirated material.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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i found this thread so informative that im not putting up any more songs on sc.
thanks all for the info.
maybe ill try reverbnation
om
my songs....mixed for good earbuds...(fyi..my vocs on all songs..) https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs(90 songs created useing bb/rb) (lots of tips of mine in pg tips forum.)
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
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