SoundCloud updates Terms of Use

Recently, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) confirmed 30 organisations, including Facebook, were being investigated as part of a national inquiry into the use of personal data and analytics for political and commercial purposes. Facebook admitted that the true extent of data harvesting on its platform impacted 87million people, not 50million as previously thought. Now it seems that the figure could be even higher. With a clear emphasis on their Privacy Policy, SoundCloud has updated its terms to include how they will be using our personal data for commercial purposes. "Please also be sure to review our Privacy Policy and Cookies Policy for more information on how we collect and use data relating to the use and performance of the Platform, as well as our responsibilities and your rights in relation to any processing of your personal data." They have also added the change to the age restriction when it comes to accepting the terms of use for the European Union. "... by accessing or using the Platform, registering an account, or by viewing, accessing, streaming, uploading or downloading any information or content from or to the Platform, you represent and warrant that you have read and understood the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, will abide by them, and that you are either 18 years of age or more, or the applicable age of majority in your jurisdiction, or if you are under 18 years of age or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, you are 16 years of age or more if you reside in the European Union or 13 years of age or more if you reside in the United States or anywhere else." They are also sighting to possible new changes to their features and functionality. Earlier this month, Trainor mentioned their emphasis on the creative tools for their paying registered users. "We reserve the right to change, alter, replace or otherwise modify these Terms of Use at any time, for example, to address legal or regulatory changes or changes to features or functionality made available through the Platform, in our discretion." Also, the timeline to decline their terms of use updates has been reduced from six weeks to two weeks. If you do not terminate your account within the two weeks from the day of the notification of changes to the terms of use, then you are automatically accepting to their terms of use of the data provided by you. "The Platform also includes social and interactive features that enable users to engage with and learn from the SoundCloud community in order to build a following and ensure you get the content that interests you most. For example, users who upload content to SoundCloud will gain access to our creator stats feature, which provides creators with insights into how the content they upload fares among users, including which users are top listeners and downloaders of such content. Some features of our Platform are only available to registered users who subscribe to a certain Service (see Subscriptions and Gift Codes below). SoundCloud, however, remains free for users that choose not to subscribe to such Services. In order to make the Platform available for free and provide you with personally relevant features, we serve tailored ads on the Platform on behalf of third party advertisers. To that end, we use information that you make available to us when you interact with the Platform to inform the nature of the ads we show you and provide you with a customized experience. More information on how we use data to show you personalized ads is described in our Privacy Policy." It indicates to SoundCloud's ancillary business plans to please their investors. This could include selling data to live concert companies or could involve investing more in their 'Creative Tools'. Soundcloud wants to become a party to the ad selling campaign behind Facebook, Google and now Spotify and will make the free-tier members sit through a lot more advertisements. "In order for you to engage with other SoundCloud listeners and creators, we enable you to create and personalize a public profile on SoundCloud. To enable you to do that, you must provide us with the information you want to display on such profile. In order to help you to navigate and discover content on the Platform that interests you, as a registered user you will also receive auto-generated personalized recommendations of other content that might appeal to you, based on your listening habits." The last amendment to the Terms of Use was made on 29th March 2016. Soundcloud recently reported a profitable quarter and is trying to prove itself as a stepping stone for artists and become potentially suitable for Spotify or another suitor to consider acquiring the company.