New SoundCloud TOS makes you grant rights to use uploads to train AI!

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat May 17, 2025 4:38 pm

Saw this posted over at GS. Looks like if you have music on Sound Cloud, they changed the TOS so that you give permission to train AI with your uploaded music. If so, I think I would avoid them from here on.

: SoundcloudtrainAI.jpeg (1.23 MiB) Viewed 714 times

bayswater · Post by **bayswater** » Sat May 17, 2025 5:34 pm

It looks bad, but at least they are admitting they're doing it, rather than denying it, or saying it's none of your business what they do with your music. Does Apple Music or other similar services have an explicit statement?

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat May 17, 2025 6:34 pm

I have no idea. Just don’t like the idea of contributing to training AI.

stubbsonic · Post by **stubbsonic** » Sat May 17, 2025 9:49 pm

James Steele wrote: ↑Sat May 17, 2025 6:34 pm I have no idea. Just don’t like the idea of contributing to training AI.

Yea, same here. Seems like with many (all?) of these services the devil is in the details.

bayswater · Post by **bayswater** » Sun May 18, 2025 8:21 am

It might be in anticipation of proposed UK legislation to exempt AI from copyrights.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Sun May 18, 2025 9:26 am

No such thing as a free lunch.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sun May 18, 2025 2:17 pm

HCMarkus wrote:No such thing as a free lunch.

I don’t use Sound Cloud anyway. Just thought it was interesting. I don’t want to train the damned robot!! Haha

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Sun May 18, 2025 4:09 pm

HCMarkus wrote: ↑Sun May 18, 2025 9:26 am No such thing as a free lunch.

True but many of us have paid accounts.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Sun May 18, 2025 6:33 pm

I used to have a paid account, but the sound quality is so bad after they mangle your music, that I had planned to find another platform as my primary posting target. I was able to verify that doing test runs on various services that SoundCloud is one of the worst. They may not compress, but they do SOMETHING to the audio that is very unflattering.

On the specific topic of training AI, it sounds like they want to use our music to help put us out of business by training robots to write the way we do. So maybe we should all post really bad music and see how it affects the AI?

EMRR · Post by **EMRR** » Sun May 18, 2025 9:06 pm

Shite sound quality already and F that noise.

joelfriedman · Post by **joelfriedman** » Mon May 19, 2025 7:18 am

F*ck. I’ve had a paid account connected to my website for years. I don’t want my music to be put into their wood chipper either. So now what? Anyone have a suggestion of an alternative place to host that they like and trust? I don’t use it for sales, no downloads, just streaming for perusal. Thx.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

leigh · Post by **leigh** » Mon May 19, 2025 7:23 am

Here's an alternative that I have heard good things about: https://wavekit.app/

**Leigh

joelfriedman · Post by **joelfriedman** » Mon May 19, 2025 7:40 am

Leigh,

Thank you. Never heard of them. Since I’m using whatever to stream, not directly promoting of selling, this approach makes some sense. As mainly a “concert music” guy I can see that a 30” limit could be an issue. I don’t have anything currently longer 1 moment pieces that bother mark, but I could.

I suppose one could simply create a private server, but that’s WAY beyond my knowledge. Mike Halloran, any thoughts on that?

Thx

Joel

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

stubbsonic · Post by **stubbsonic** » Mon May 19, 2025 8:04 am

joelfriedman wrote: ↑Mon May 19, 2025 7:40 am I suppose one could simply create a private server, but that’s WAY beyond my knowledge.

I've put a few random audio bits on my server, but for finished work I think it's probably a similar issue, if you make a link public, I expect it could get swept up in an AI training thingy. This is a good topic.

leigh · Post by **leigh** » Mon May 19, 2025 8:13 am

Apparently 30 minutes is not a hard limit: https://docs.wavekit.app/allowed-file-types/

And they try to prevent AI scraping: https://docs.wavekit.app/protecting-content-ai/

**Leigh

MOTUnation.com