Blog News

Soundcloud has been accused of reducing its streaming quality from 128kpbs to 64kbps

Soundcloud has been accused of reducing its streaming quality from 128kpbs to 64kbps after users began to notice a reduction in audio quality from the beleaguered streaming giant.

The change was initially noticed by New York-based producer Direct who saw that tracks were being shown as 64kbps Opus (below), which is actually a new audio codec which is meant to sound better than a 128kbps MP3.

That hasn’t stopped legions of keyboard warriors wading in and accusing the service of covertly reducing its audio quality.

Soundcloud has since released a statement refuting the claims as “inaccurate”, and revealed that it tests new codecs all the time.

“We have been using the Opus codec (among others) since 2016, we always appreciate feedback, but these reports are inaccurate,” the statement reads.

Last year, the struggling streaming service was saved from closure at the last minute thanks to an injection of emergency funding and the CFO has left the company to join radio platform TuneIn and the SoundCloud founder Alex Ljung issued a statement concerns the streaming platform.

If you’re really concerned about the apparent dip in quality, Direct has kindly made a Chrome extension that apparently solves the problem.

https://twitter.com/DirectOfficial/status/948584457405128704