With deals in place with two of the three major labels and 20,000 indie labels, SoundCloud has spent the last couple days deleting thousands of unlicensed tracks from their servers. It's now clear why: this morning, SoundCloud announced SoundCloud Go, its new paid subscription service.
SoundCloud Go allows ad-free streaming, offline listening, and expanded catalog of music in addition to the music already available on SoundCloud's unpaid tier. Their biggest advantage at this point is a complete catalog with roughly 100 million more tracks than Apple Music and Spotify.
The service is available for $9.99 on Android and desktop computers and $12.99 for iOS. Subscribers will receive a 30-day free trial. It is only available in the United States as of today; it will open up to other countries over the course of 2016.
SoundCloud Go represents our vision of the future of music streaming," said SoundCloud founder and CEO Alexander Ljung in a press release. "A platform for creators to collaborate on; for fans to discover the latest tracks, enjoy legendary music and connect with their favorite artists; and for our unique creative community to have the opportunity to be paid for their work."