SoundCloud Announce New Membership Tiers

SoundCloud released details of their new paid-for tiers at SXSW this week, for both standard users and advertising partners.Their new simplified system seems set to dramatically increase the numbers of users and revenue. The new tiers of membership are the Pro package that include four hours of audio upload space for $38/£25/29 euros annually with limited analytics and insight. Also greater control flexibility than the previous iteration of basic paid membership which featured the same space/fee but without the insights

The advanced membership is now called ‘Pro Unlimited’ and features more advanced insights and complete analytics and also unlimited storage for 99 euros/£86/$129 annually. This new straightforward system works out far cheaper than the current pricing plan and could be a great boon to the company and attract those who were previously on the fence regarding upgrading

Of course they will also keep their ‘Freemium’ accounts – which include no fee but just two hours of audio and no analytics.

SoundCloud’s current visual layout

Another special membership is the ‘Pro-Partners’ tier – with this advertising and partners can use SoundCloud to promote their content using a new ‘moving sounds’ feature which displays image slideshows behind the user’s audio and can dynamically represent a brand visually. This could be a great advantage to SoundCloud and help it to further concrete its status as the go-to-platform for online audio hosting, this could also be greatly useful for bands and artists – to integrate visual promotional content directly into their share-able SoundCloud songs. Pro Partners is currently in Beta and is already attracting some big names. Although at this stage embedded moving sounds do not display the visuals and just show up like a normal SoundCloud link, but we think it’s only a matter of time before this will be amended

The ‘Pro-Partners’ moving sounds layout, currently in beta, here is an image of Red Bull’s utilisation of this feature

We’ll keep you updated on these interesting new developments. SoundCloud definitely look set to cement their position as the web’s primary source of audio-sharing. The new tiers are available to new members now and existing users can upgrade to the new system at SoundCloud