Lincoln students love their music. As they walk down the halls, earbuds are stuck in ears, and wrapped around limbs. There are countless ways that students access this sea of sounds. But one service appears to be gaining popularity above them all; SoundCloud.

SoundCloud is a music streaming service that allows users to record, upload and stream songs from around the world.  

According to students surveyed at Lincoln, SoundCloud is popular because it is free and high quality. Also, it’s easy to download and easy to use and record music with.

Sophomore Sophia Zhang listens to artists on SoundCloud. A big reason that she sways toward the streaming service is the price. “I like that it’s free.” Zhang said.

But while some use the service exclusively to listen to music, others make music, like senior Steven Yang. Yang started on the service after playing guitar, piano and ukulele and was looking for a challenge.

“It’s just like for fun, because I used to play guitar, piano and ukulele and then I quit piano but still wanted to play music and make music so I started to use Soundcloud,” Yang said.

Yang loops tracks on GarageBand and then uses Audacity to produce his music. When asked to describe his taste, Yang said that “if you had to put it into a real genre it would be like in electronic or chillstep but I try to make my own brand of my whole trash aesthetic.”

Other seniors use the uploading service to spread their music, like songwriter Ella Van Der Meulen who records folk and indie songs.  

Van Der Meulen said that “[SoundCloud] has definitely given me an outlet to do my own songs because I would do a couple covers on YouTube and it never felt like what I wanted to do.”

Van Der Meulen has gained some attention from her tracks on SoundCloud and is currently in the process of releasing music for Spotify.

However, not all Lincoln students think SoundCloud is great. Among them is Lucas Kubaja a junior, who said that, “there’s a lot of musicians on SoundCloud who make bad music.”

Still, Kubaja said that it does fill a need that other services like Youtube don’t and “gives a lot of amateaur musicians an outlet for their music.