I love Mixcloud (creator, heavy consumer, and pro subscriber). I never really understood the USP of SoundCloud, for mixes Mixcloud beats it hands down, for single tracks audio.com beats it all ends up despite being very beta. SoundCloud's USP seems to be "it's just about bearable to use in place of audio.com and mixcloud".

I was a SoundCloud subscriber for a few years until mid '19. Back then the value prop was music discovery + streaming access to artists who weren't on other platforms.

But I don't see any evidence of growth. Other platforms have stepped up their music discovery tools and broadened their catalogs. I ended up dropping the subscription because they didn't support Android Auto and said they had no plans to (in their defense, they introduced support in mid-2021).

It very much feels like SoundCloud was first to the space (were they? surely someone else did "YouTube but music" first) and have been riding that out.

I don't know. On the producer side, a lot of us were on soundclick before soundcloud.

Anyway, good luck with the sale. My soundcloud feels like an empty town only visited by promotional bots.

People seem to be on tiktok and ig nowadays.

Very much agree with this. Even the design / UX of the site feels very 2010 - like they've been resting on their laurels and coasting for a decade at least.

How about producers?

Mixcloud fingerprints audio to pay royalties to the artists whose tracks get played [1] (if that's what you're asking)

[1] https://www.mixcloud.com/mixcloud/posts/how-we-pay-creators-...

No it's just super easy and free to post on SC, that's all.

Now that you mention fingerprinting, it could be good if it means musicians can sample without fear or bad if original musicians get false positives from the algorithm.