Music streaming app SoundCloud is rolling out a new TikTok-style discovery feed. The vertical scrolling feed highlights 30-second clips of songs that serve as a preview to users. If they like the song, tapping the Play button lets them listen to the full tack.
SoundCloud has been testing this AI-powered feature since March this year. It was a limited test among a small group of users on Android and iOS platforms. A few months later, the company is now widely pushing the feature to the public. It will be available to all users on both platforms worldwide over the next few days, BR reports.
The new TikTok-style “Discover” page sits next to the “Following” page under the app’s Feed tab, which previously showed you new tracks from artists that you were following and reposts from friends (the Following page does that now). The Discover page is where the AI magic happens. It uses AI technologies to help you discover new artists and songs that you might like.
SoundCloud relies on technologies developed by Musiio, a music startup it acquired in May last year to improve its discovery algorithm, to curate your Discover feed. Musiio also helps in curating the 30-second clips for songs. While artists can manually select the portion of their songs that they want to surface on the Discover feed, Musiio’s AI technologies can do that automatically.
Along with playing the full track, SoundCloud’s new music discovery feed also offers the ability to follow the artist directly from the preview page. It has shortcut buttons for like, comment, and add to playlist as well. If you like a song in the Discover feed, it will show up on your “Liked tracks” playlist. You can also manually add a song to your existing playlists or music library.
The TikTok-style feed will help with music discovery on SoundCloud
With over 130 million users, SoundCloud is one of the most popular music streaming apps around the world. The platform hosts more than 320 million tracks from 40 million creators. It has been exploring various ways to improve the experience for both artists and fans in recent months.
In May, SoundCloud gave artists features like analytics and the ability to DM fans to drive engagement. It followed up with a feature called First Fans in June, which gives more exposure to new tracks. The company has now come up with a TikTok-style vertical feed to help users discover new music of their tastes. The new feature should be available to everyone with the latest update for the app.
