Music is a wonderful thing that can make us feel thousands of different emotions; nobody knows how music was actually born, but I’m pretty sure that it was discovered during the Iron age by some metalsmith, or maybe he just discovered the metal genre.
But one can’t deny that music is one of the most important parts of our life and with technological growth, it is possible to listen to any song whenever we want due to music streaming platforms and in this article, we’re going to compare 2 music streaming platform; namely Amazon Music and SoundCloud to figure out which of these 2 is the best music streaming platform. So let’s get started.
- Amazon Music
Amazon Music is one of the top streaming platforms which you can’t overlook, as it is providing exciting features and a huge fan base. For those who don’t know what Amazon Music is (those who have been living under a rock), it is an online music streaming platform operated by Amazon. Launched in 2007, and since then they are expanding and improving their services. Amazon as a company that is used by millions globally, won’t stop until it conquers the music streaming industry.
They offer tons of options to their listeners as it’s available on phone (Android and IOS), tablet, web, Alexa enabled devices, etc.
#Features
Amazon Music offers a free subscription but it doesn’t include offline playback. If you want additional features then you can opt for Amazon Prime, Amazon Unlimited Subscription, or Amazon Music HD. Amazon Prime membership allows access to over 2 million songs with more than 2000 playlists curated by Amazon experts editorials. Of course, you’ll also have ad-free streaming and offline playback. While Amazon unlimited offers over 50 million songs with over 2000 hand-curated playlists. Plus, ad-free music and offline listening with unlimited skips. And Amazon Music HD, which is currently available only in the UK, US, DE, JP, CA, FR, AT, and ES. It offers 50 million lossless uncompressed CD-quality tracks plus millions of ultra HD tracks.
#For artists
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Sadly artists can’t claim their Amazon Music page directly anymore hence you’ll have to sign to a record label or distributor. Initially, Amazon used to allow free upload but in January 2018, they officially announced that this service would be shut down. So now the label or distributor will take care of delivering your music to Amazon Music. You can connect with The Orchard, TuneCore, DistroKid, CD Baby, STEM, AWAL, and Ditto according to your needs, as each service is unique with what they offer. Once your distributor delivers your content, Amazon Music takes 24 hrs to make it live.
Per stream Amazon pays $00.00402, hence you’ll need at least 366,169 streams to earn a monthly living wage in the US.
#Pros
- It’s easy to transfer purchased music between different devices without any limitations.
- Prime users get a huge discount.
- Their recommendation build-in feature is great as it considers streamed music and purchased tracks to calculate suggestions.
- Mobile (for Android and ios) and desktop (mac and windows) applications available.
#Cons
- Artists don’t prefer Amazon Prime as it pays far less than any other streaming platform.
- Their desktop app is quite unmanageable.
- SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a free music streaming and distribution platform, launched in 2007. It’s one of the biggest music and audio platforms that let people enjoy and discover music from the most diverse creator’s community. Since its launch, it has been providing a platform for all the music and audio creators to share and monetize their music and connect with other fellow artists.
It’s an open platform for both creators and listeners, anyone can listen and upload music (as long they have all the rights). One can listen to millions of tracks (which aren’t actually free on other platforms) on SoundCloud for free. One can have access to their application on Mobile (Android or ios) and desktop, Signing up to SoundCloud is free and easy.
For listeners, they have a paid subscription option too, namely SoundCloud Go where they can get access to the full catalog, ad-free streaming, and offline playback.
#Features.
The best thing about SoundCloud is that it’s interactive, listeners can repost their favorite tracks and share them with their friends and followers. While their spotlight feature will let listeners pin up to 5 tracks or playlist on the top of their profile page.
SoundCloud also allows creators to have a unique URL for their profile, which helps them to share individual tracks, playlist, or their profile on different social media platforms or blogs.
#For Artists.
SoundCloud offers three different plans for artists, from which one can choose according to their needs and resources. The first plan is of course a Free subscription, where artists can upload tracks (can upload up to 180 minutes of audio), build their profile, and grow their audience for free. The other two plans are paid subscriptions namely, Pro Subscription and Pro Unlimited. By upgrading to Pro Subscription, artists receive exclusive features, profound stats, more upload time (can upload up to 6 hrs of tracks), and more support and opportunities. And if you further upgrade it to Pro Unlimited, you’ll get access to all the features of Pro Subscription additionally you’ll get more features and you’ll be allowed to upload unlimited hrs of tracks.
SoundCloud insights might be a great feature for artists as they can help them understand and measure how their music or audio is doing. Various useful insights like which track performed best or in which country your track is most popular. Buying soundcloud plays is a pro tip to get your track go viral over the world.
#Pros
- You can pretty much find any song or any artist without paying a single penny.
- SoundCloud also provides instant messaging services which help artists to interact with their fans.
- It offers useful insights through its analytical feature, one can view the overall summary of different stats of your track.
- One won’t miss new songs or any updates from your favorite artists as SoundCloud allows you to follow and get notified whenever they upload a new track.
- Artists can upload their music or audio for absolutely free if they are intending to upload tracks of less than 3 hrs.
- SoundCloud allows fellow artists to get feedback and to find like-minded artists with whom they can collaborate.
#Cons
- While listening to your favorite songs you might come across audio ads which are of course annoying, As they can ruin your experience. But SoundCloud doesn’t add these audio ads themselves, they are mostly found in sponsored podcasts.
- Although it’s great that SoundCloud notifies listeners and creators regarding favorites, a number of plays, or uploading music and offers so many awesome features it can get annoying when one can’t use all those features smoothly due to SoundCloud’s buggy interface.
- Their SoundCloud Go plan doesn’t provide satisfaction to the listeners, as they are not going to get access to more songs than they were getting in a Free subscription.
- SoundCloud isn’t for podcasters, although it is known as an audio and music platform. As there are very few podcasts, hence SoundCloud isn’t focusing on improving features that benefit podcasters.
Final Verdict.
So we’ve finally reached the end, and it’s time to serve the final verdict. While both apps are impressive in their own ways, I think the title of the best music platform goes to Amazon Music because I found its app UI to be quite smooth and it also gave me an option to transfer my local music files into the app right after logging in. The majority of people have Amazon Prime Membership these days, so the app is pretty much free to use. But if you don’t, SoundCloud would be a good pick for you.
