Yesterday, SoundCloud came under criticism following claims that it had reduced the quality of streamed audio via the online platform from 128 kbps MP3 to 64 kbps Opus.

In a statement sent to Pitchfork, a representative from SoundCloud said that these claims were "inaccurate". The statement continues: "SoundCloud has not altered its approach to audio quality. We have been using the Opus codec (among others) since 2016, and we regularly test different combinations of encoding and streaming to offer listeners a quality experience on any device."

The lower bitrate of 64 kbps Opus format does technically mean that less data is transmitted from second to second while streaming, but the codec has been praised by a number of developers for online music transmission, due to its broad range of possibilities for bitrate, bandwidth and frame size.

2017 was another embittered year for the streaming service with the company continuing to struggle to monetise the organisation. In July of last year, it was forced to make 40% of its staff force redundant, with CEO Alexander Ljung leaving the company the following month after SoundCloud secured new funding.