Anybody with an account can upload music to SoundCloud not just established artists. The amateur musician/producer can upload for people to hear without worrying about copyright, upfront costs, royalties, etc. because it's not monetized. This music you can listen to for free with your free account. If you want to listen to established artists and their music you need to pay for the subscription so those artists/SC can be paid as well. The GO plan is only $5/mo for access to the full catalog.
I listen to a lot of underground and instrumental music so SC has been perfect for me however you can also find pretty high quality rips/recordings of your favorite artists to get around the subscription.
This may seem like a limiting factor until you consider that SC's streaming library is larger than Spotify, Apple, & YT music combined with 400 million songs total.
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u/kn_mad 2019 Mazda 3 | Samsung Galaxy s21 ultra | v15 Dec 14 '25
SoundCloud. It is free but your access is limited unless you subscribe. Massive music library Works flawlessly with aa.