&gt; there is tons of music that has been created in the past 5+ years that exists exclusively there, and it would be a tremendous cultural loss if it were to disappear.<p>I don&#x27;t know. We would obviously loose a fragment of history but if those tracks were so important culturally then they would have been distributed more widely. For instance, pressed on CD or vinyl or utilized in a movie or pirated in some way.<p>While I do like soundcloud I don&#x27;t get what&#x27;s so special about it. My hunch is that it is not so much the website but the fact that the internet is mainstream these days. There were websites where artists could share their music and have a profile before Soundcloud. Just to name a few: Besonic, mp3.com, myownmusic ...