SoundCloud - Music & Audio for Android
Editors' Review
SoundCloud brings you a ton of audio content, including songs from popular and emerging artists as well as an eclectic selection of podcasts and audiobooks, being the audio equivalent of YouTube. You'll love its excellent sound quality, social features, and seamless interface.
Pros
Huge music stream: Because SoundCloud features audio from popular artists as well as from lesser-known ones (including the users themselves, who can easily record sounds), it beats all other music sharing platforms in content diversity, encompassing all genres and making sound discovery a delight.
Well built: From the streamlined interface with neat icons and intuitive swiping controls for quickly browsing tracks or audio categories and responsive menus for genres, to the optimized built-in player with its great sound quality, everything about this app feels polished.
Social integration: SoundCloud isn't only a huge audio library but also a social platform. The vibrant community behind it continuously likes, shares, and comments on songs and creates playlists, making this app really exciting.
Cons
Great for tracks, not so great for albums: Unlike Spotify, SoundCloud focuses more on tracks rather than albums, which makes it feel more mainstream. It's impossible to listen to the whole discography of an artist or band with this app because only some of their songs are available -- usually the most popular.
Requires lots of permissions: It's a bit strange that a music app needs access to your camera, location, or contacts.
Bottom Line
Well made and replete with content, SoundCloud provides a wonderful experience for music lovers and can quickly become your new favorite Android music app. That said, you should keep in mind that this app is essentially about music discovery, with a focus on hot tracks and artists, which means you shouldn't expect it to let you listen to all of your favorite band's albums.
