SoundCloud now offers Australian students discounted pricing

SoundCloud is offering full-time Australian college and university students a 50% discount off its top-tier SoundCloud Go+ subscription.

A 30-day free trial has begun this week.

The drop from $11.99 to $5.99 a month is aimed at younger age groups who spend more time listening to music than older groups.

Once hooked, the plan is they will pay higher subscriptions after their student days.

With a SoundCloud Go+ for Students subscription, students get access to:

    * Save unlimited tracks for offline listening

    * Ad-free listening

    * Access the full 200 million track catalogue, no previews

    * High-quality audio

It has to be renewed every year, to verify student eligibility via SheerID.

The Australian offer is part of a global roll-out to the US, UK, New Zealand. Canada and Ireland this week, and Germany, France, and The Netherlands next week.

It’s a case of better-late-than-never for SoundCloud: Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music and Amazon Music Unlimited has been offering them, some since 2016.

In 2017 SoundCloud offered a cheaper (but not student-specific) option of $5 a month SoundCloud Go plan, with fewer features than SoundCloud Go+.

The idea was to speed up the conversion of the streaming service’s 175 million users into payers.

But only 100,000 took up on the offer.