Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is one of the largest music streaming services in the world and is available in 190 countries and territories.

It was originally intended to allow musicians to collaborate by facilitating the sharing and discussion of recordings, but later transformed into a publishing tool for music distribution.

[16] According to Wired magazine, soon after its inception, SoundCloud began to challenge the dominance of Myspace as a platform for musicians to distribute their music.

[22] SoundCloud announced in January 2014 that it had commenced licensing negotiations with major music companies to address unauthorized, copyrighted material regularly appearing on the platform.

[21] According to media sources, the negotiations were initiated in an attempt to avoid similar problems faced by Google, which had been forced to handle a large number of take down notices on its YouTube video-sharing platform.

However, the prospect of acquisition was discounted by the media, with one report stating that "the numbers didn't add up",[25] and Bobby Owsinski hypothesizing on the Forbes website in July that SoundCloud's ongoing inability to secure deals with the major music labels was the foremost culprit.

[35] In December 2014, it was reported that SoundCloud could potentially raise approximately US$150 million in new financing, resulting in a valuation surpassing one billion dollars.

The major label issue became prominent again when the new financing information was released, as the lack of monetization was presented as an issue—SoundCloud signed an agreement with Warner Music Group as part of the new Premier program that allows both Warner Music, which also has a minor stake in the company, and its publishing division to collect royalties for songs they have chosen to monetize on the site; meanwhile, the other labels remained skeptical of the company's business model.

[38] In June 2015, SoundCloud announced that it had reached a deal with the Merlin Network, a group representing 20,000 independent record labels, to monetize their content through the Premier partner program.

A UMG spokesperson told The New York Times that the deal would give the company an option to require certain content to be restricted to paid subscribers, a statement suggesting that SoundCloud was preparing to launch its own subscription streaming service.

[43] The original version, which was renamed to SoundCloud Go+, allows access to (at the time) over 150 million songs, offline playback, no ads, no previews, and premium music tracks for $US10 per month through the site.

[46] In July 2017, SoundCloud announced layoffs and the closure of two of its five offices in San Francisco and London in an effort to manage costs.

[52] A new APN was released in December 2012 which improved mobile device support and added features such as concurrent listening, site navigation, and the ability to create personal collections.

The Verge found that, excluding existing content uploaded by users, the service's initial library of songs is smaller than those of its closest competitors.

Such criticism particularly followed the launching of a revamped website in 2013 which, according to former CEO Alexander Ljung, was implemented for the purpose of increasing SoundCloud usage.

[68][69] In April 2015, SoundCloud announced a new partnership with Zefr, a content tracking company that works with YouTube to help identify songs on the platform and facilitate either takedowns or ads being run against it.

[71] This announcement was met with alarm and concerned responses from numerous artists, who deemed the change unacceptable because it would eliminate their only effective means of sharing music on SoundCloud.

[77] Features that enable users to comment, like, and share songs allows the platform to operate as a social media site rather than a streaming service.

[80] In a Vanity Fair interview Chance explained how he decided against signing to a major label and felt it was better for him to give his music "without any limit on it".

[82] Smokepurpp, a SoundCloud artist, explained in a Rolling Stone article how the first songs he created and put on the platform were not recorded using a real microphone.

[81] The DIY nature of SoundCloud made it so millions of artists were able to put out their work without any studio equipment usually needed to make music.

[87][88][89] In October 2022, Russia's Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media blocked access to SoundCloud due to its refusal to remove anti-war podcasts.