It seems that it's Music-Wednesday on the Android scene today. Aside from Spotify launching in Indonesia, SoundCloud is starting a new paid subscription (in addition to its free tier) that should transform how everyone perceives the service.

Up until now, SoundCloud has been mostly popular with indie artists and labels, amateur musicians and audio producers, podcasters, and regular users who like recording sound and audio blurbs and sharing them with the world. With SoundCloud Go, the service is announcing that it's made some licensing agreements with Sony, Merlin, Warner, UMG, and other major and indie labels to carry their catalogues. This adds "tons" of new tracks from "the biggest names in music." I'm quoting SoundCloud's blog post here because I can't see what the company considers hit songs as I don't have access to Go just yet. It's only launching in the US now, but the help documents say that it "will be rolling out to more countries over the course of 2016."

SoundCloud Go is free for the first 30 days, after which the subscription costs $9.99 per month, but that's only if you sign up through the website or Android app. Apple users will have to pay $12.99 if they're paying through the iOS app. And aside from access to all of the new tracks, Go subscribers will benefit from an ad-free experience and offline listening to playlists and likes (with automatic caching in the future). Oh hello, Spotify number 2!

If you're a creator with a Pro Unlimited account, you'll be able to sign up for a reduced $4.99 Go subscription for the first 6 months. You should also be able to choose whether your tracks are available for free or only for paid Go subscribers.

The SoundCloud Android app has been updated to add this new Go plan subscription option.

Source: SoundCloud Go, SoundCloud Blog