SoundCloud is the worst company, so hostile to former paying users! I am a hobbyist songwriter and have posted my rough mixes (Apple's Music Memo app which adds drum and bass automagically with two clicks & then mix it in Garage Band) on my SoundCloud for more then ten years. I signed up for their Artist Pro account and was a member for of such consistently for a few years at $17 a month. Once you cancel they then hold all your music hostage by hiding it and later threat to delete it. Horrid!

A former paying user is not a customer. If you don't pay, why should you receive service? I buy a pizza at this pizza shop every week, but I still don't get free ones.

SoundCloud is European, so most of the dark patterns used by American companies to offer "free" service are not available to them, and they are required by law to actually delete data instead of pretending to delete it.

SoundCloud used to be good prior to the redesign.

Recently I decided to evaluate it for serious use and start posting there again, only until their new uploader told me I need to switch to a paid plan, even though I triple-checked I was well within free limits and under my old now unused username I uploaded a lot more (mostly of experimental things I am not that proud of anymore).

It looks like their microservices architecture is in chaos and some system overrides the limits outlined in the docs with stricter ones. How can I be sure they respect the new limits once I do pay, instead of upselling me the next plan in line?

Adding to that things like the general jankiness or the never-ending spam from “get more fake listeners for $$$” accounts (which seem to be in an obvious symbiosis with the platform, boosting the numbers for optics), the last year’s ambiguous change in ToS allowing them to train ML systems on your work, it was enough for me to drop it. Thankfully, it was a trial run and I did not publish any pending releases.

If you still publish on SoundCloud, and you do original music (as opposed to publishing, say, DJ sets, where dealing with IP is problematic), ask yourself whether it is timr to grow up and do proper publishing!

The difference between Artist vs Pro is three hours vs unlimited uploaded music.

So if you had over three hours uploaded, it seems reasonable for them to restrict the service. If you had <= three, then it would a problem.

that just sounds like customer not paying for service not getting the service

You mean you never kept your originals but just uploaded and deleted the masters?

You can export your entire profile using yt-dlp. Of course you have to do it, when you are still a paying customer.

Are there any alternatives?