Since Twitter has injected $70 million into Soundcloud recently, the streaming service has been hard at work putting that money to good use – or at least what they think will benefit users and stakeholders.
First, Soundcloud announced the addition of a “Suggested Tracks” feature to their platform. At first glance, you may ask yourself, like I did, “How is this any different from the Recommended Tracks feature that’s already in place?” According to a Soundcloud rep, this feature aims to be more personalized than Recommended, which simply finds tracks similar to the one you’re currently listening to.
“It uses your listening activity to automatically find new tracks and artists based on likes and plays, and then will refresh frequently with tracks you won’t find on any other music platform,” he said.
Second, via a leaked press statement, Soundcloud will be discontinuing “the visual track feature which displays a full-screen visual behind the waveform.” Keep in mind that this is not referring to track art, but rather the full visual that appears behind the waveform as in the image below.
In the leaked statement, Soundcloud states this change will take place starting July 15, and will not apply retroactively. This means that if you want your track to feature visual art, start that process now or forever hold your peace.
The statement continues, “Why is SoundCloud doing this? While we know many of you are fans of this feature, we do not see it impacting fan engagement for you, therefore, we are shifting our resources from the maintenance of this feature to the creation of better tools and features that will help you drive fan engagement on SoundCloud.”
With the large injection of capital from Twitter, Soundcloud is likely making even more changes in the coming months. Stay tuned to be the first to hear about them here.
