SoundCloud Scrapers and the Official API: 2026 Guide
SoundCloud is still where many artists show up first, which makes it a favorite of A&R scouts, labels and music startups. Unlike some platforms, SoundCloud has a working public API with clear limits. This guide covers that API, the terms you agree to, the free tools, and the metrics worth tracking.
The official API
SoundCloud's API guide recommends its "Get an API key" flow, or creating an app at soundcloud.com/you/apps. For public data you use the Client Credentials flow, which covers search, playback and URL resolution without a user session.
curl -X POST "https://secure.soundcloud.com/oauth/token" -u "CLIENT_ID:CLIENT_SECRET" -d "grant_type=client_credentials"Rules from the guide that trip people up:
- Send the client ID and secret with HTTP Basic auth only. Putting them in the body is not supported.
- Tokens last about one hour. Store and reuse them, and refresh with the refresh token.
- You can create only 50 tokens per 12 hours per app, and 30 per hour per IP. A script that requests a token per call breaks fast.
A simple token cache avoids the token limits entirely: keep the token and its expiry time in a file or in memory, reuse it until a few minutes before it expires, then refresh. One process should own the token; if you run many workers, share one cached token between them instead of letting each fetch its own.
Rate limits
From the rate limits page, defaults that may change:
| Operation | Limit |
|---|---|
| General API | About 100 requests a minute per app |
| Search | 3,000 requests an hour |
Streams (/tracks/:id/streams) | 1,500 requests per 24 hours |
| Downloads | 10 requests a minute |
| Likes and reposts | 500 each per 24 hours |
Apps approved for higher production access can get up to 10 times these limits. Over the limit you get HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header.
What the API terms say
SoundCloud's API terms of use are strict on a few points:
- No scraping to copy or republish. Section 10 bars scraping or similar techniques to copy, aggregate, repurpose or republish platform data, beyond content you can legitimately reach through the API.
- No AI use of API content. Section 4 bars using API-accessed user content to train AI or as input to AI, and bars audio fingerprinting.
- No file saving. Section 5 says apps must not include file-save functionality; only session-based caching is allowed.
- Some commercial use. Section 6 permits some commercial purposes, decided case by case.
This is not legal advice. If you build a product on SoundCloud data, read the full terms with a lawyer.
Free tools
yt-dlp supports SoundCloud tracks, sets, users and search, and scdl (GPL-2.0) is a dedicated SoundCloud downloader. Both are useful for your own uploads or content you have rights to. For metadata only, yt-dlp can print JSON without downloading:
yt-dlp --skip-download --dump-json "https://soundcloud.com/ARTIST/TRACK"Metrics for scouting artists
Raw plays favor old tracks. These ratios are fairer:
| Metric | Formula | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Like rate | likes ÷ plays × 1,000 | How many listeners cared enough to like |
| Repost rate | reposts ÷ plays × 1,000 | Word of mouth, the strongest signal on SoundCloud |
| Comment rate | comments ÷ plays × 1,000 | Engagement depth |
| 7-day play growth | (plays now - plays 7 days ago) ÷ plays 7 days ago | Momentum, the main scouting signal |
| Follower conversion | new followers ÷ new plays over the same week | Whether listeners come back for the artist, not one song |
A scouting routine: track 200 to 500 artists, snapshot each one's latest tracks weekly, and sort by 7-day play growth with a minimum repost rate. Review the top 20 by ear.
Doing it with ScrapeIO
The routine above needs three calls per artist: the SoundCloud artist API for followers and profile, the SoundCloud artist tracks API for the latest tracks with plays, likes, reposts and comments, and the SoundCloud track API for a single track by URL. There are no tokens to rotate. See the SoundCloud endpoints.
Sources
Checked on 8 November 2026 from each vendor's own pages. Prices and limits change; follow the links before you decide.
- https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/guide
- https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/rate-limits
- https://developers.soundcloud.com/docs/api/terms-of-use
- https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/supportedsites.md
- https://github.com/scdl-org/scdl
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