as a musician with songs on there, I would like a button that says, "sell this song to people for 1$" and to let me put a large graphical "cover" on it for people to see.
soundcloud is organized way more as a musician-to-musician site than a musician-to-consumer site. it's no wonder bandcamp is successful while sc struggles.
Act as a marketplace! They already have content creators and content consumers in mass! Why I can't buy the songs from my favorite DJ sets?! Why those DJs can't sell directly to their fans?
Putting in ads between every $SOME_NUMBER of plays.
I think the do(/did) that already? Maybe they don't have enough companies buying ads with them? It's been some time since I last used it.
They do that, at least in Europe
I think that's only on mobile apps because when I listen to mixes at work I have never heard an ad.
They could fix their search to begin with. It is pretty pathetic.