SoundCloud Go launches in the UK: Ads and subscriptions come to streaming service as it takes on Apple and Spotify

Normal users will still be able to get on the service – but there'll now be ads and reminders to sign up

Panelists discuss Soundcloud at the Digital Life Design conference in 2011 (Sascha Baumann/Getty Images)

The music-streaming app SoundCloud has launched its paid-for subscription service in the UK, bringing with it a full library and ads for those users that don’t pay.

The company is best known for hosting audio from up-and-coming but also well-established musicians, who post new tracks onto its audio hosting service. But it’s now looking to take on more traditional streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify, too, by offering a full library.

That catalogue will feature 125-million tracks, including most major new releases when they appear on other streaming services.

It will charge £9.99 to sign up for SoundCloud Go. The existing free service will remain, but it will now be ad-supported so that marketing will pop up between songs.

The company hopes that it can encourage people to upgrade by offering the paid-for features as well as regularly prompting people to move up to the Go service. It will also offer other extra features, like offline listening - that will be visible for free users, but they won’t actually be abel to click it unless they pay.

SoundCloud hopes that the new features can sit alongside the existing functionality. That will mean that people can listen to the new Kanye album as they would on Spotify or Apple Music, for instance, but will be able to put it in a playlist that also includes the kinds of remixes that SoundCloud has become known for.

That deal should also allow SoundCloud to change its arrangement with songs’ creators so that they are able to receive money when they are remixed. Problems with licensing and payment have dogged SoundCloud as it has become more successful, with the music industry worrying about people pirating songs and hosting them online.

The huge collection of songs will continue to exist as tracks rather than in the catalogue arrangement that is found on Spotify and Apple Music, for instance. The company encourages people to listen to songs using playlists, rather than as albums.