Tag: Audio

Canceling SoundCloud Subscription for Refund

by Greg Johnson, posted in Tech Tips

SoundCloud Pricing

The SoundCloud pricing plan will force anyone who is a regular content creator into their Go Pro Unlimited offer which is normally about $180 a year. Their Pro plan is $84 and only includes 6 hours of uploaded audio.

These rates are a lot of money to pay considering you could host your own website and upload unlimited audio for about $5 per month. Given that many audio content producers are non-commercial indy musicians or news podcasters, this price starts to push what most people feel they can afford for a hobby, and given that many people already have and need a website that already includes huge storage capacity, SoundCloud is charging a lot of an add-on.

SoundCloud Refund

SoundCloud offers a 30-day trial and money back guarantee which is explained on their site.  However, cancelling the trail and getting your money back isn’t easy.

Unfortunately, like many other companies, SoundCloud makes it a little difficult to find how to cancel your subscription or get a refund.

There’s no easy method to contact any customer service representative, even from within their fairly expensive paid account.

On your account subscription page, there’s no button that says ‘cancel’ or ‘refund’ but instead you must ‘edit’ your subscription and then downgrade it. Once downgraded, there’s no message about any refund.

If you do a Google search on ‘SoundCloud Refund’ you’ll find a page that describes Canceling or downgrading your Pro subscription. Here are the instructions from that page.

For SoundCloud Pro or Pro Unlimited subscriptions, you can cancel at any time by going to your Subscriptions page.

Go to the pencil icon next to your current subscription status like this:

20150907at1358-soundcloud-edit-downgrade-plan

Next, click on ‘Don’t want to renew your plan?’:

20150907at1418-soundcloud-cancel-plan-subscription

You will then be shown the date that your plan will return to Free, and what the Free plan offers in comparison to your current Pro or Pro Unlimited plan. Click ‘Confirm & stop renewal’ to cancel your current subscription. If you change your mind, you can upgrade back to a Pro subscription at anytime here.

If you’re within the 30 days money back period after your first purchase,  a refund will be processed automatically.

Please note: When you downgrade to a free plan, we will not delete anything from your account. The oldest uploads exceeding the limits of the free account will be hidden. You will be able to view these hidden tracks on your Tracks page.

20150831at1709-soundcloud-tracks-free-3-hour-limit-hidden-tracks-exceed-minutes

All your hidden tracks along with their stats and comments will be saved so that whenever you choose to re-upgrade, everything will be restored.

SoundCloud Subscription Plans

Below is the pricing model for SoundCloud Pro and Pro Unlimited subscriptions.

20160916fr0622-soundcloud-pricing

Enable Speech on iPad or iPhone to Hear Text

by Greg Johnson, posted in Audio, Tech Tips, Tech Tools, Uncategorized

When you turn on the Siri text to speech feature, it’s possible to listen to web pages, emails, text messages, and other text. This is a huge time saver and lets you go about your work with hands and eyes free as you listen.

To enable speech on an Apple iPhone, iPad, or iPod, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Tap on Accessibility
  3. Tap on Speech
  4. Turn on Speak Selection by moving the slide button to the right until it has a green indicator.
  5. Tap on Voices
  6. Tap on English (or your language of choice)
  7. Select a voice to use. The enhanced voices will sound much more natural and may be easier to understand. These require a download.
  8. Once you’re done with the above steps, you can select text in any app on the device, and once the text is selected you’ll see an option to Speak. However, don’t exit the Voices selection yet.
  9. You will want to try out a few of the enhanced voices to see which you prefer. To do so, press the Home key twice to switch to another app. Or, press it once to go to the home screen and start an app such as email or Safari to browse the web. Now you can press home twice to toggle between the two screens — the app you want to read from and the Voices selection screen.
  10. Change to a voice and then switch back to the app to select text and choose Speak. Each time you’ll hear the voice you’ve just selected in settings.
  11. You will also want to adjust the speed of speech to see what speed is best for you. This is found under General > Accessibility > Speech. The Speaking Rate is illustrated by a turtle or a rabbit. When you adjust the speed, the default voice will read a sample. To hear how your selected voice (from step #9) sounds with the speed setting, you can go to a document as described in step #9 above.