Heads up, SoundCloud users... You're opted in to let them train A.I. with your songs

[douglasricketts]

This was brought to my attention in the viewer chat during today's TAXI TV. From AV Club just a couple days ago...

"Soundcloud addresses terms of use that say it has the right to train AI with users' music"
Soundcloud issued a statement this weekend, addressing a story that began circulating a few days ago, when people looked through the music hosting service’s terms of use and found language stating that they’d been unknowingly granting the company permission to use their uploaded music as AI training data. “You explicitly agree that your Content may be used to inform, train, develop or serve as input to artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies or services as part of and for providing the services,” reads the service’s current terms of use. Online researchers looked back and found that the language had been inserted, with little fanfare, into the TOS back in February of 2024, even as the music hoster has continued to expand the number of generative AI tools it offers users who don’t want to do all that tricky work of, uh, making music.

https://www.avclub.com/soundcloud-train ... a-ai-music

[Guitarhacker23]

Yep. One of my publishers is adamantly against AI and when this was revealed, they said don't host the songs you're submitting to us on that platform or we will terminate you as a writer for us.

It's getting crazy.

[douglasricketts]

One of my publishers is adamantly against AI and when this was revealed, they said don't host the songs you're submitting to us on that platform or we will terminate you as a writer for us.

Thank you for sharing this. Good to know.

[telefunkin]

One potential option (for submitting to libraries rather than for general public consumption) is RealCrafter.
The features of paid accounts are quite impressive but you can cover many basic needs with just the FREE one.
https://www.reelcrafter.com/

[VanderBoegh]

Wow, that's all I needed to hear to know my SoundCloud days are over. Good timing too, because I was just scheduled for auto-renew in another two weeks. So after reading this thread, I jumped in and cancelled my auto-renew, and will probably just nuke the entire account when my membership is up in mid-June.

What a shame. That site started off with such promise, 13-14 years ago. I remember when they were on their death bed, and were slated to go out of business (this was in 2017 or 2018?), but they got an influx of capitol from some investor at LITERALLY the 11th hour. Like, I mean, at 11:00 pm the night before they were set to shut everything down.

I wonder if part of that investor's demands were that music would be fed into an AI training program, as some sort of revenue-generating mechanism? Who knows..... but regardless, that's enough of THAT!

I used ReelCrafter for a year many years ago. While it was okay, I wasn't too floored with it. Seems like most people in our industry are using Disco now, which I've resisted all these years. But I suppose that's probably where I'll migrate to. If their cost is in the $150 / year range, then that will essentially be a "wash" with the money I was spending on SoundCloud Pro.

Anyway, thanks for the heads-up on this!

~~Matt

[RealPickle]

Wow, that's all I needed to hear to know my SoundCloud days are over. Good timing too, because I was just scheduled for auto-renew in another two weeks. So after reading this thread, I jumped in and cancelled my auto-renew, and will probably just nuke the entire account when my membership is up in mid-June.

What a shame. That site started off with such promise, 13-14 years ago. I remember when they were on their death bed, and were slated to go out of business (this was in 2017 or 2018?), but they got an influx of capitol from some investor at LITERALLY the 11th hour. Like, I mean, at 11:00 pm the night before they were set to shut everything down.

I wonder if part of that investor's demands were that music would be fed into an AI training program, as some sort of revenue-generating mechanism? Who knows..... but regardless, that's enough of THAT!

I used ReelCrafter for a year many years ago. While it was okay, I wasn't too floored with it. Seems like most people in our industry are using Disco now, which I've resisted all these years. But I suppose that's probably where I'll migrate to. If their cost is in the $150 / year range, then that will essentially be a "wash" with the money I was spending on SoundCloud Pro.

Anyway, thanks for the heads-up on this!

~~Matt

FWIW I really like Disco. I've never used SC pro so I can't speak to the comparison, but Disco's Artist plan (the only one that they offer for composers/producers) gives you unlimited tracks/playlists etc, and the analytics/tracking is pretty decent too. If you pay for a year at a time it's only about $130.

[SubRivers]

This is just part of the ongoing story of what is becoming the biggest heist in history.
Best defence is to somehow flood the training set with the rubbish - train on that &**&((£s !

[douglasricketts]

Best defence is to somehow flood the training set with the rubbish - train on that &**&((£s !

Oh man, I once hooked a Yamaha drum machine to a Casio CZ-1000 in the 80s and let it play whatever the notes were mapped to using the organ patch....

[Casey H]

The place has been a wasteland of pirates and spammers/scammers for a long time. I only kept the account because one of my publishers asked for their links. Also, I stored a lot of songs with the lyrics up there years ago and it was an easy place for me to retrieve lyrics when needed. At this point, 99% of what I have is on Disco. The cool think about Disco is it is totally private, nothing comes up in a Google search, no one steals your music, you don't get messages from folks who want to "help you" get more plays, etc. Whenever I log in there, if there is a message or a new follower, 99% of the time, it's a spammer. I spend most of my time on there blocking people.

This is a good reminder to me that it's time to close that account. Or at least the paid version.

[MarkFeil]

I pulled everything off of SoundCloud and moved over to Disco well over a year ago. I'm very pleased with Disco, which is currently $12 a month. Highly recommend.