There is no single premium version of SoundCloud. SoundCloud sells two separate families of subscription and they do completely different jobs. The listener family (Go, Go+ and DJ) strips ads out of the app and opens the licensed catalogue for your own listening. The creator family (Artist and Artist Pro) raises your upload allowance and switches on distribution and monetisation for the music you made yourself. Artists buy the listener plan by mistake constantly. If that was you, congratulations, you bought yourself better headphones and your tracks never found out.
Table of Contents
What the listener plans actually give you
Go, Go+ and DJ are consumer products. They attach to your account as a listener. They have no effect whatsoever on your upload ceiling or on what you earn. SoundCloud’s own comparison sets them out like this.
| Feature | Go | Go+ | DJ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad-free listening | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Offline playback | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Full access to the SoundCloud catalogue | No | Yes | Yes |
| High quality audio | No | Yes | Yes |
| Use of the catalogue inside DJ software | No | No | Yes |
Two things in that table surprise people. The cheaper Go plan does not open the full licensed catalogue, so a lot of major label music stays out of reach even while you are paying. And these plans are not sold everywhere. SoundCloud publishes a country list that currently covers North America, Australia, New Zealand and a set of European markets, which is the quiet reason behind most of the “why can’t I subscribe” complaints. If your country is not on that list, the button is not broken. It was never there.
What the artist plans actually give you
This is the family you wanted if the question was ever about your own music. There are three rungs and the free one has a name, which is Basic.
| Feature | Basic (free) | Artist | Artist Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total upload time | Up to 2 hours | Up to 3 hours | Unlimited |
| Distribution to other platforms | None | 2 tracks per month | Unlimited |
| Monetisation eligibility | None | 2 tracks per month | Unlimited |
| Track boosting | None | 2 tracks per month | Up to 30 per day |
| Mastering credits | None | 1 per month | 3 per month |
| Spotlighted tracks | None | 1 | Up to 5 |
| Fan insights | Basic | Standard | Advanced |
| Split Pay with contributors | No | No | Yes |
Read the upload row first. It decides more than everything under it. Two hours sounds like a lot until you are a producer with forty beats and a couple of long mixes, at which point you hit the ceiling over a single weekend. Artist buys you one extra hour. Artist Pro takes the ceiling away, and that is the actual reason most working artists end up there rather than any of the shinier features.
The other row worth staring at is distribution. Artist Pro pushes your releases out to Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, YouTube Music and sixty-odd other services from inside SoundCloud. Since the end of November 2025 SoundCloud passes on 100% of the royalties those partners send back, having previously kept a share of them.
Now the money detail nobody reads until it bites. There is a payout processing fee, quoted as low as $0.50 per payout. Payments only auto-deposit once your balance reaches $25. And payouts run on net 60, so a month’s earnings arrive roughly two months after that month ends, because the streaming services take about 30 to 45 days to pay SoundCloud in the first place. The delay catches out far more artists than the fee does. Plan your first payout on a seasonal timescale.
The price on the page is usually the yearly price cut into twelve
Here is the source of every “SoundCloud is lying about the price” post you have ever scrolled past. The headline figures on the plans page are monthly equivalents of the annual plan. SoundCloud states this plainly in its own help centre: pay month to month and you are on the flexible plan, which costs more across a year, while the yearly plan is charged in full at checkout. The number you clicked is real. It just wants twelve months up front.
A handful of other paths change what you hand over:
- Go+ has a student rate at half price once you verify your university details, where the student plan is offered.
- Go comes with a seven day free trial and Go+ with thirty days.
- Artist Pro subscribers get 50% off Go+, but only when both subscriptions are bought on the SoundCloud website. Go through the Apple App Store or Google Play and the discount will not apply, because the app stores do not support the bundle.
- Moving from monthly to yearly billing is not a toggle. You cancel, wait for the current plan to expire, then subscribe again choosing the yearly option.
That last one deserves a calendar reminder, since there is also no way to change your billing date once it is set.
No plan makes people listen, though one feature puts you in front of strangers
This is where I am supposed to tell you that paying SoundCloud lifts your tracks up the rankings, that the algorithm quietly favours subscribers, and that the subscription is really buying reach. You were expecting me to say all that, weren’t you. It does not work that way. No SoundCloud subscription ranks your music higher, and a listener plan does nothing at all for anybody’s play count, yours included.
One feature does genuinely place tracks in front of people, and it deserves to be understood properly rather than hoped at. It is called Amplify and it comes with both artist plans. Switch it on for a fresh upload and SoundCloud’s recommendation system starts slotting that track into other listeners’ autoplay, matched against what they already choose to listen to. The eligibility rules are tight:
- The track has to be public, and it has to be music. Podcasts and spoken word do not qualify, and neither does ASMR.
- It has to run over one minute and under ten.
- It has to have been uploaded or made public within the last fourteen days.
- Tracks that arrived through an outside distributor are not guaranteed to qualify.
Artist gives you two of these a month. Artist Pro allows up to thirty tracks a day to be considered for recommendation. SoundCloud is also honest about the ceiling on it, saying track quality is weighed when deciding who gets shown what. So Amplify is a placement. A placement gets a new upload heard during the fortnight when being heard matters most, and after that the song has to carry itself.
What a play is worth once somebody presses it
SoundCloud pays independent artists through fan-powered royalties, introduced in 2021 and still running. Most services pool every subscription payment and divide it by total market share, which moves money from small artists towards very large ones without anybody deciding to do it. SoundCloud instead works out how much of a listener’s month went to you, then pays you from that listener’s own subscription or advertising revenue. If a fan spends their entire month playing nothing but your EP, their money comes to you.
Two consequences follow. Fan-powered royalties apply only to plays that happen on SoundCloud itself, so a Spotify stream from a SoundCloud distribution deal still pays under Spotify’s ordinary pooled model. And bots earn far less here, because a looping bot brings no subscription fee and no advertiser with it to draw from. There is no minimum play count before you start earning. Once your tracks are monetised, you are in.
How to choose, including the option of paying nothing
Two questions, and the answer usually falls out on its own.
First, how much audio do you actually have? If your whole catalogue fits inside two hours and you are still working out what you sound like, Basic is genuinely fine. Nobody needs a subscription to have four songs on the internet. Artist suits the awkward middle, where you put something out every month or two and want it distributed and mastered without committing to the top rung, though be aware that Artist is only sold in selected territories.
Second, who distributes you already? If you are with a distributor or a label, you are paying for distribution once. Paying SoundCloud to do the same job simply doubles that bill. In that situation Artist Pro is worth it for the unlimited uploads and the advanced insights, and if you want neither, stay on Basic and keep uploading.
One last thing, and I am dropping the jokes for it. If your Artist Pro plan lapses, nothing is deleted. Tracks above the free limit get hidden from the public while staying visible to you on your own Tracks page, and they reappear the moment a new plan is active. Separately, SoundCloud now requires two-factor authentication on your account before it will pay you out or let you change your payout method. Turn that on this week, well ahead of the afternoon your first payment is due.
