While SoundCloud avoided that fate, and was deemed financially healthy earlier this year, it has since been overshadowed by other platforms like TikTok, which rapidly amassed a large user-base and consistently launches songs onto the charts and into multi-million major-label contracts. In 2017, it laid off a large number of employees and was thought to be 50 days away from bankruptcy. This was all supposed to help SoundCloud play next to Spotify and Apple Music. SoundCloud went after mixes and remixes, which had helped it gain listeners in the first place. Producers complained about the platform’s aggressive takedowns of their songs. As the company started cozying up to the major labels in 2014, eventually inking deals with all three, it started to lose some of the freewheeling, anything-goes luster that bred and attracted future stars. SoundCloud has been limping forward in the last five years. Kyun started a petition to “show SoundCloud how wrong it is to limit artists with monetary gates instead of creating an open platform for young talent to grow and express themselves.” “Some people just don’t have enough of an income to put in that much a month, so can hinder an artist’s growth,” says the SoundCloud user Kyun, who declined to give his real name. Artists wasted little time in venting their frustration on social media. Unless you’re making 12-minute songs, 15 tracks is significantly less than three hours of audio to get additional space, users would now have to pay. On Monday morning, the streaming service proclaimed that it was “bringing lossless HD storage and downloads to all.” But hidden inside that early Christmas present was a razor blade: “To make lossless HD file management free to all, starting December 9th, our free upload limit will change from 3 hours of audio, to 3 hours or 15 tracks.” For the artists who rely on SoundCloud to distribute their music free of charge, this week began with an alarming email.
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