Is SoundCloud Truly Underground or Is It So Anti-Mainstream That It Has Become Mainstream?

SoundCloud. For years it was the underground artist's bastion, an alcove away from the pressures and corruption of labels and the mainstream music market for artists to grow and develop a loyal fan base on their own terms. It served as a needed resource for music fans desperate to listen to their favorite artist's old mixtapes that never made the jump to more mainstream platforms (I'm guilty myself of this; Travis Scott, Chance the Rapper, Logic, and J. Cole need to move their mixtapes to Spotify). Oh yeah, and there was all that stuff with face tattoos. Yet, with a listening base of 200+ million people (according to SoundCloud) and countless so-called "SoundCloud rappers" from Chance the Rapper to Lil Uzi Vert to the late XXXTentacion blowing up and becoming mainstream off of the platform, is SoundCloud really the underground, anti-mainstream machine of aspiring young artists online anymore? Or has it become the very mainstream that it paints itself out not to be?

The first thing to notice about SoundCloud is its high user count in recent years. With over 200 million accounts registered on SoundCloud as of recent months, it is hard to argue that SoundCloud is a well-kept secret. People that claim that they are SoundCloud users like they are part of a secret society claiming all the good music are the same type of people that claim that they were Warriors fans before 2010 (Sports analogy I know, but you should probably understand it by now being in Maxwell's class). Let's face it, SoundCloud is not underground anymore by any means. Can music on SoundCloud still be underground? Yes (although you have to read "underground" as "subjectively irrelevant"). However, if you are a small artist on SoundCloud hoping to blow up, you're not going to get anywhere as long as you stay underground. All of the artists I've mentioned earlier were originally SoundCloud artists with a small, loyal following, but if you look at them now, none of them are still on SoundCloud. They've signed with labels, built up their followings, and moved onto Spotify and Apple Music leaving SoundCloud crying behind like a proud mother. SoundCloud just isn't underground anymore, and the more it tries to paint itself as anti-mainstream, the more mainstream it will become.

In the end, SoundCloud has lost the right to call itself underground as a whole. While there are definitely smaller artists and producers making great music on an unseen scale within the SoundCloud infrastructure, they are not who SoundCloud is made for anymore. Now, SoundCloud caters to the kids who listen to Drake here because they aren't willing to pay $10 a month for other streaming platforms. Is this a problem? No, SoundCloud is making money and nostalgic people like me can still go back and listen to mixtapes like Days Before Rodeo, Friday Night Lights, and Welcome to Forever that never made the jump with their successful creators to the "mainstream." All I ask is that SoundCloud takes the underground out of its description and stops calling for a ride like it didn't jump on the bandwagon with the rest of us back on down the road.