Soundcloud to Remove Album Artwork for Tunes

Soundcloud has been hanging on by a thread for some time now since the major labels have brought down the gauntlet on copyright infringement. On top of that, their decision to remove track info on the mobile apps while simultaneously not able to view private tracks nor fixing the issue of having to continually re-follow artists has proved ill for the streaming service as customers have been jumping ship left and right.

As if that wasn’t cruel enough, Soundcloud released this statement about the future of their product:

“Dear Friends, Creators. and Partners:

Beginning July 15, 2016, SoundCloud will retire the visual track feature which displays a full-screen visual behind the waveform.

The visual track feature will remain intact for those tracks with existing visuals in place as of today, as well as any content which has been branded through ad support.

Why is SoundCloud doing this? While we know many of you are fans of this feature, we do not see it impacting fan engagement for you, therefore, we are shifting our resources from the maintenance of this feature to the creation of better tools and features that will help you drive fan engagement on SoundCloud.

Any questions, please let me know.”

With everything mentioned above, this might be the right move for the struggling music giant. While the aesthetic feel will lessen, at the end of the day, anything to improve the functionality of their struggling music recognition system that has seen a multiple of artists from across different genres to remove public and private productions in fear of the dreaded three strikes policy. Guess we will have to wait and see.