The music industry treats Soundcloud as a relic. Drum and bass treats it as the central nervous system. The disconnect is interesting.

What Soundcloud does that Spotify does not

Long mix uploads. Forty-minute DJ sets. Unreleased works in progress. Personal recordings from a club PA. None of that fits the Spotify track model. Soundcloud accommodates the actual unit of DnB consumption: the mix, not the track.

The algorithm

Soundcloud reposts spread mixes through the DnB community faster than any other social channel. A repost from a respected DJ to their 50k followers can quadruple a new producer's monthly listeners overnight. There is no Spotify equivalent.

The downside

Soundcloud has near-zero monetisation for producers. The Pro tier is paid by the producer for upload privileges, not paid to them for listens. Producers tolerate this because the platform is also the discovery layer.