SoundCloud Launches Collection, A Customizable Home Base For Users

SoundCloud’s home page stream isn’t always the most conducive to browsing and discovery, so the company is launching a new alternate home base for its users with ‘Collection,’ a way to follow artists, build playlists and like content for a personalized view and playback experience.

It’s a relatively small re-orientation of how SoundCloud users will see the world when they visit the site on the web, or log into their accounts on the iPhone app (and Android in 2015), but it makes a big difference to how the overall service is characterized. The new look and organizational theory reflects SoundCloud’s need to go from a site organized around community sharing of legally gray material to something resembling a more legitimate streaming audio business that partners with professional media makers.

The new look is reminiscent of Rdio, in that it presents a home page that offers up square album artwork for content navigation. It also breaks down your collection according to what you’ve liked, what you’ve put in playlists, and who you’re following, and gives you the option of navigating each in a chronological fashion by the date added, or of just shuffling everything or each category individually.

SoundCloud looks to be angling to become more of a destination, and less of a platform individuals use to host so they can share elsewhere, too. In its current form it’s fairly rudimentary, though effective, but this could become a key component of the site’s strategy as it continues to evolve.