LAST UPDATED: June 27th, 2019
Mixcloud is a British music streaming service, headquartered in London, England. It allows users to upload, follow, and listen to radio shows, curated playlists, and podcasts, in addition to their own content. Since its founding seven years ago, Mixcloud has acquired a number of notable users, including Harvard Business School, TED Talks, and—more recently—Barack Obama. In 2011, Mixcloud made it possible for users to upload files of any size. In 2012, Mixcloud reported over 3 million active users and more than 500 thousand users registered through the Facebook application.
Top Ranked Companies
#1
Spotify
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6.3 Overall Score
#2
Apple Music (Beats 1)
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5.9 Overall Score
#3
Pandora
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5.8 Overall Score
The Good
- Mixcloud's services are entirely free.
- Mixcloud is available all over the world.
- Mixcloud's basic, free plan includes: unlimited uploads, unlimited listening, basic profile customization, and basic statistics. Users already enrolled in the Basic plan are guaranteed perpetually free use of the service.
- Mixcloud's Premium plan is designed for "listeners." It costs $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year. It includes most features of the Basic plan, in addition to: early access to new features, a Premium Badge, no advertisement, and advanced profile customization.
- Mixcloud's Pro plan is designed for "uploaders." It includes most the features of the Premium plan, in addition to: a Pro Badge, full statistics, scheduled uploading, and the abilities to disable commenting, highlight content, unlist certain content, and hide statistics.
- Mixcloud offers 30 day trials for both the Premium and Pro plans. When switching from a Premium plan to a Pro plan, Mixcloud will charge the difference between the two, instead of the full Pro cost.
- After sign-up, Mixcloud directs users through a brief questionnaire to ascertain their music preferences, after which the website makes station suggestions. Users may follow certain stations, which then show up in their feed, or skip this step entirely and find music on their own.
- While music is playing, users can use the dashboard at the bottom of the screen to fast forward, add songs to their Favorites list, share a song through social media, repost it on their Mixcloud profile, or add a comment. The music dashboard also displays all upcoming songs.
- Users may create their own playlists by adding music as it plays in the dashboard or searching for songs individually.
- Hovering over a play button will initiate a brief audio preview.
- Users have the option to join a Group, which is a collection of registered members with an interest in common. Users receive occasional updates when new, relevant content becomes available.
- Mixcloud provides promotion opportunities for new artists, which guarantee that their music will appear in "high-impact key positions" across the site.
- Mixcloud provides an Application Programming Interface that users can search and upload to, if they choose. Mixcloud also provides a simple how-to page that guides users through the API itself and includes information for entering specific code.
- Users can share audio media through social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
- Mixcloud offers fairly extensive support pages to assist users as they navigate the site and upload their content.
- Mixcloud offers mobile apps for Android and iOS.
The Bad
- Mixcloud is only licensed to provide content through streaming, in order to ensure that artists receive royalties for their music. As a result, Mixcloud requires its members to include correct artist and song metadata with all of their audio uploads. Unlike other media hosting sites, Mixcloud cannot generate this information automatically. This also means that users may not download content directly from the Mixcloud platform.
- Due to licensing constraints, the $15/month Pro plan includes advertisements.
- The Mixcloud website is beautifully designed, but difficult to navigate. Relevant inks are compiled in different corners of the web page. For this reason, it is a challenge to locate specific information.
- Users may fast forward while listening to music, but may not go backward.
- Sound quality depends on the type and size of each uploaded file. This contributes to poor quality consistently across the site.
- Banner advertisements on the site are large and distracting, often disrupting the flow of artist profiles.
- Mixcloud is not supported by most streaming clients outside mobile and desktop applications, like gaming systems, Chromecast, and Roku.
- Mixcloud does not offer an option to censor explicit lyrics.
The Bottom Line
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DJ_Draeko Seattle, WA
Their customer service is dreadful.
I've been trying to reset my password for several years. The first time I tried, I'd forgotten and set up a new account, until I saw one of my old mixes posted as "this dj also made this" sorta thing. I clicked on it, and there was my old account.
This was two days ago. I tried resetting my email, got a prompt that I would receive the resetting information, and nada. This happened several years ago, and it's happened twice in the past two days in 2018. I am quite miffed, and already looking for alternatives.
4 years ago
Review Source
alyssa Pleasant Grove, UT
Mixcloud is a thriving company on an interesting journey. Great work happening on all sides of the business, be it engineering, community or brand partnerships. Brilliant company culture with zero office politics. Everyone who works here is super smart and genuinely nice.
4 years ago
Juan Gorrez Beverly Hills, CA
Created a mix from an app called CrossDJ, and I decided to upload it to mixcloud through their in-app upload button. Within a day my mix was gone, and my account was terminated because they believed I was a bot... Not using their services ever again.
4 years ago
Stephen Veal
Mixcloud is a superior alternative to Soundcloud.
6 years ago
