SoundCloud: A Heaven or Hell for the Music Industry?

As many of you may know, SoundCloud has become one the leading music streaming services on the internet for musicians and music listeners everywhere. Over the years, SoundCloud users have been able to upload music and listen freely; however, downloading these songs was not usually an option. For musicians, this was a way to protect themselves from having their music available for free without seeing any type of profit. Even though this protects the musicians, many SoundCloud listeners see this as a drawback. Admit it, we like to listen to music for free and if we can download it for free easily with a click of a button, most of us will.

A lot of music listeners on the internet use file converting sites that allow them to input a URL from a site, such as YouTube, and with a simple click, they can convert the URL into an mp3 file and download it to their computer for free.

Well aware of this trend, SoundCloud has introduced a converting site similar to these called SoundCloud-Download.com. It works just as simply as the others, just input a SoundCloud URL, click download, and watch the file be converted and downloaded to your computer.

So what does this mean for the music industry and SoundCloud musicians?

Main Pro: Could bring more users to the SoundCloud site, therefore it could increase awareness of a musicians music.

Main Con: Musicians on SoundCloud may not want to upload a lot of their music since users can download them for free. It also could decrease the amount of musicians on the site itself and cause them to look for an alternative music uploading/streaming service that will keep their music protected.

Future: It seems as though these types of file converting sites are becoming more an more popular and I don't see that changing. Many consumers, including myself, would rather get their music for free and if given the option. These converting sites are going to continue to thrive as long as there is that demand and they can find loopholes to keep their sites up and running.

By Alinda Yu