So, I think its ok.
Especially because if Soundcloud were to do anything with my music worth suing about, that would give me more publicity, which I’m sure anyone who isnt already a famous pro artist would benefit from, right?
Using a song here and there doesnt generate a lot of royalties anyways. I have a song being played in Europe, and I get a few US dollars every month. Woopee.
And if someone in the future is gonna take my outake, demo version of a song and share it because of a loophole in this agreement, then so be it. No one is gonna be interested unless I’m a huge artist, and even then it would be just for the true fans that wanna hear something like a backstage studio outake. I’ll make loads of cash on my super-polished radio version, and you can do anything you want with my demos as I retire in luxury.
And no ones gonna beat me to the punch with my own music, cuz if they do, well then thank you very much partner, I’ll take it from here, cuz I’m the real deal, and it only gets better boom batta my pockets gettin fatta.

If elsewhere within the terms there is the possibility to delete one’s account, this contradicts the “perpetual” and “irrevocable” nature of the license. So which terms to believe?

It looked interesting enough to sign up. Until I hit their terms and conditions.

My intellectual property is important to me.

They might “appear to protect my ownership” however they are in fact saying “While you own it, we own it too when its on our systems”.

I Say… Bollocks to that..

I clicked the cancel button on the sign up page and will not be returning to soundcloud unless those clauses are dramatically changed.. i.e probably never.

I’m hardly an expert, but the way I read it, Soundcloud have covered themselves – and that’s the question that still hangs in the air. It’s five months since I wrote that post, and Soundcloud haven’t updated their terms and conditions yet. As I say in the post, I have no doubt they have only good intentions – but I’m also pretty sure that if someone at Soundcloud misused the power the T&C give them, there would be nothing anyone else could do about it.

In short for me it says they can display the music in any way anywhere anyhow… but that doesn’t mean some person is going to play your track somewhere (outside of the website) and take credit for it.

They let the creator decide where soundcloud can move/show the content.

Compare it to giving an employer of your store a bank card to go and fetch some supplies for your company. You give them some rights within your company to handle confidential matters.
But the moment the employer takes off his uniform and still uses the bank card.. its wrong. It wasn’t meant to go that way. And I don’t think soundcloud will take off their uniform and handle the music anywhere outside of the website.

So many artist use it now, they could get a lot of lawsuits if they would even try and run with copyrighted material

I doubt whether there is legally much difference between the two, but to a new visitor BandCamp’s Terms seem much more reasonable.

I think SoundCloud should make their T&C closer to BandCamp’s, but I think both companies, and all others with this type of user agreement, should undertake within the T&C to only share music as specifically authorised by the user, and to require the same of their successor(s) if any.

We’re super busy building the most kick-ass service possible for musicians and audio professionals but we’re hoping to find time to tweak any terms in the T&C’s that anyone might be concerned about. Or humanise them slightly so that they can’t be misinterpreted.

@chuck SoundCloud is used for content that you own or have the rights to use. It could be anything: your band’s music, the catalogue of a label you run, parts to a track you are collaborating on, an interview with somebody or even a field-recording. Many people are using SoundCloud privately to collaborate on or send contacts their music but it’s also great for hosting your music and then sending to Myspace, Facebook or Twitter.

Hope that helps…

* put my band’s music up where people can download it
* put my band’s music up to stream to widgets
* put my personal music collection up so I can listen to it
elsewhere besides my home computer (because I work with a
computer all day and still don’t have an iPod)
* put my personal music collection up for my friends to
steal download