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How do I register the tracks already on my SoundCloud?

2026-11-13 · OpenStela

Paste your SoundCloud profile URL (soundcloud.com/yourname) into Import from an account on the works page. We read the public RSS feed SoundCloud publishes for your account, list the tracks with their artwork and publish dates, and register the ones you tick, one record per track. Tracks you've already registered show as registered and can't be ticked twice.

That gets you link records quickly. A link record fingerprints what SoundCloud said about the track on the day you registered it. It doesn't hold your audio. For the tracks that matter most, also upload the master file. Every record, link or file, goes into that night's on-chain batch, so its date can't be moved afterwards. This post walks through the import, what the feed does and doesn't give you, and how the two kinds of record differ.

Why register tracks that are already public?

A SoundCloud track page is evidence that something was online, but it isn't a fixed record. You can retitle a track, replace the audio, make it private or delete it. SoundCloud can change its pages too. Two years from now, "it was on my SoundCloud" is a weaker answer than a dated fingerprint that anyone can check without asking you or SoundCloud.

It also helps to know what the law already gives you, and what it doesn't. The US Copyright Office's Circular 1, Copyright Basics (revised 09/2021) says copyright protection in the United States "exists automatically from the moment the original work of authorship is fixed." You don't need us, or anyone, for that. The same circular lists what official registration adds: for US works, registration (or refusal) is necessary before an infringement suit can be filed, and registration made before or within five years of publication is prima facie evidence of the facts in the certificate.

A record from us is none of those things. It isn't a Copyright Office registration and it has no statutory effect. It's a dated, verifiable record that a particular page snapshot or file existed on a particular day, under the name you gave. That's useful evidence if a dispute comes up, and it costs nothing to make. This is general information, not legal advice.

Importing your SoundCloud tracks

1. Open the works page, choose Register a work, then Import from an account.
2. Paste your profile URL and press Read. The note under the box says the list comes from SoundCloud's official RSS feed. You'll see a count like "40 items, 3 already registered (skipped)".
3. Untick anything you don't want. Select all and Select none help with long lists.
4. Decide on dates. Unlike some platforms, SoundCloud's feed carries a publish date for each track, so the box Use the platform's publish date as the creation date actually fills something in. Leave it ticked and each record gets the date SoundCloud shows for that track. That's when the track went up, not when you made it, so it's a conservative date. If you untick it, whatever you type in the date field goes on every ticked track.
5. Fill in Attribution with the artist name you use on SoundCloud, spelled exactly as it appears there.
6. Rights. Music has two layers, so the form asks you to confirm both I hold the rights to the composition and I hold the rights to the recording. Circular 56A explains why below. If you can't tick both for a track (a remix of someone else's stems, a cover, a collaboration where someone else owns the recording), leave it out of the batch and deal with it separately.
7. If you used AI tools, tick This work was made with AI tools, list them, and write Your contribution. In a batch, that text is identical on every record. Group tracks that were made the same way and import each group on its own.
8. Choose whether the records show on your public page, then press Register.

There's a daily limit on how many works one account can register, shown on the works page as "N left today". A big back catalogue may take a few sessions.

What the RSS feed does and doesn't show

The import reads two public things: your profile page, to find the numeric account ID SoundCloud uses internally, and then feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:<id>/sounds.rss. That's the feed SoundCloud itself publishes, the same one podcast apps read. We don't log in as you and we don't use a private API.

What that means in practice:

• Only public tracks appear. Private tracks and anything behind a secret link aren't in the feed. For unreleased or private work, upload the file instead.
• The list is tracks, not playlists. Sets and albums don't show up as items, and pasting a set URL into Paste a link isn't treated as a song. Register the tracks themselves.
• Long catalogues. When we tested the import on a large public account on 13 November 2026, the feed returned 140 tracks with dates, going back several years. We haven't checked whether SoundCloud caps the feed for very large accounts. If a track you expect is missing, register it with Paste a link.
• The date is SoundCloud's. We copy the publish date from the feed as SoundCloud wrote it. It's what the platform says, not something we verified.

For a single track, paste its URL (soundcloud.com/yourname/track-name) into Paste a link. The form fills in the title. Query strings like ?si=… are dropped, and different spellings of the same URL count as one track, so you won't register the same song twice by accident. Pasting a single link doesn't fill in a date, because the source we snapshot for a single track doesn't include one. Type a date if you know it.

A link record is not a file record

When you register a SoundCloud link, we fetch SoundCloud's official oEmbed response for that track once and keep it. oEmbed is the small JSON description SoundCloud gives to any site that wants to embed a track: title, artist name, artist URL, artwork. The record's fingerprint is the SHA-256 of that response. The record also notes whether the attribution you typed appears among the names SoundCloud returned. That's noted, not judged. Your public work page embeds SoundCloud's own player, so plays still happen on SoundCloud.

So a link record pins down a description of the track, not the sound. That's a real difference:

Uploads take mp3, m4a or wav up to 30 MB each. Registration is free; each account gets 300 MB of upload space for works, and link records take almost none (see pricing). A sensible split: import everything as links in one pass, then upload masters for the handful of tracks you'd most hate to lose. If you're planning a release beyond SoundCloud, what to register before releasing a Suno album walks through a master-first order.

Each record comes with a Proof Pack you can download and check without us. How a registered work is verified shows the steps.

Composition and recording are two works

The two rights boxes aren't red tape. The Copyright Office's Circular 56A (revised 03/2021) puts it directly: "Sound recordings and musical compositions are considered two separate works for copyright purposes." The composition is the music and lyrics; the sound recording is a particular recording of it. One person can hold both, or they can be split, which happens often with remixes, features and producer collaborations on SoundCloud.

We ask you to confirm both because a music record that silently claimed one layer would be misleading. If you only hold one, don't register the track through the batch; that keeps the record honest. If AI tools were involved, how much of each layer is yours is a separate question. How much do I have to do for an AI work to be protected? goes through what official sources say.

Linking your SoundCloud account

Under Settings → Music accounts, add your SoundCloud account. It appears on your profile right away marked self-declared, and tracks registered from it are labelled the same way. You don't need anything more to register tracks.

To get the verified mark, copy the one-time code, paste it into your SoundCloud bio, save, and press Verify. Once it passes the code is used up and you can remove it. For SoundCloud, the bio is the only method: the profile links area isn't readable from the public page, so we don't offer the links method there. We also don't search the whole page for the code, because anyone can paste a code into a comment under your track.

A verification is its own record, anchored that night, valid for 90 days, with a reminder a week before it lapses. While it's active, we check your feed every six hours and notify you when a new public track appears, asking whether you want to register it. Nothing is registered automatically, because a record goes on chain and can't be withdrawn. The first check only notes what's already there, so you won't be flooded with notifications about old tracks.

There are also quick-register shortcuts in settings (a desktop bookmarklet, the Android share menu once you've installed the web app, and an iPhone Shortcut) that open the form with a SoundCloud track already filled in.

What the records do and don't show

SoundCloud's own rules about what you upload and what SoundCloud may do with it are in its Terms of Use. Registering with us doesn't change anything there; read the current version yourself.

A record shows that a specific oEmbed snapshot or file existed on a specific date, under the name you gave, with the contribution you wrote. If your track turns up re-uploaded under someone else's name, you have dated fingerprints to show the platform or a lawyer. It doesn't show that you made the track, that you hold its rights, or that a copy infringes. It doesn't stop anyone copying. For other ways to fix a date, see five ways to prove a file existed on a date, and if you also post on StreetVoice, the StreetVoice version of this guide covers its different import.