And in truth, the ‘slightly more limited’ description is fair: these aren’t draconian limits by any stretch of the imagination.) (These limits are already in place in the US, but in other parts of the world, they’re new for Mixcloud users.
Those new limits? Free users will only be able to seek forwards when listening to a show, but not backwards they’ll only be able to listen to the same show up to three times in a ‘rolling two-week window’ and they won’t be able to listen to shows that feature more than four tracks by the same artist, or more than three tracks from an album. “The short answer is: so that we can keep up with the costs of running a streaming service that puts artists and creators at its core, and so we can build a sustainable platform that will be here for you in the long term.” It’s important to us that, as a member of our community, you understand why,” explains a blog post from Mixcloud’s co-founders this morning. “In the coming months, this free playback streaming experience on Mixcloud will become slightly more limited. There were rules covering what could and couldn’t be uploaded in mixes, but listening was free. Mixcloud grew as a platform for DJ mixes, podcasts and other radio-style shows, using an ‘interactive radio’ blanket licence to pay royalties to rightsholders for music used in that content. Wait, what limits? Ah, that’s the other part of the company’s announcement this morning… Audio-streaming platform Mixcloud is introducing a new service-wide ‘Premium’ subscription, which will cost $7.99 a month and enable listeners to “access all public shows across the platform without limits”.