SoundCloud 2025 Data Breach
Platform · Music streaming and audio sharing · Creator and streaming platform · Global
SoundCloud Music Streaming API Data Scrape (2025): 29.8 Million User Profiles Mapped from Public Data
Online audio distribution and music streaming platform.
Scrape · ObscureIQ Intelligence
Breach Risk Index i
38/100
Lower riskHigher risk
Moderate: notable exposure with meaningful misuse potential.
Data Sensitivity i
StandardExposed data is largely lower-sensitivity. Standard identity-protection precautions are advised.
29.8MRecords
2025Year
The Breach Risk Index (BRI) is a proprietary 0–100 score rating how dangerous a breach is right now, based on how recently the data has been circulating on the dark web and how valuable it is to attackers.
Breach Summary
SoundCloud suffered a data breach in late 2025 when an attacker gained unauthorized access to systems and mapped publicly available profile data to the private email addresses of approximately 29.8 million users. The threat actor, attributed to the ShinyHunters collective, is believed to have used scraping techniques to extract and link user records. After the initial breach, the attackers attempted to extort SoundCloud before publicly releasing the stolen data in January 2026. The exposed data includes email addresses, names, usernames, profile avatars, follower and following counts, and in some cases the user's country. While no financial data or account passwords were compromised, the breach is considered high risk because it effectively deanonymized a large share of SoundCloud's user base. Linking a private email address to a public profile allows attackers to identify who is behind an account, enabling targeted phishing, account takeover attempts, and harassment of both listeners and creators. SoundCloud disclosed the incident and notified affected users following discovery. No class-action lawsuits or regulatory enforcement actions had been publicly documented as of early 2026. Affected users should be alert to phishing emails that reference their SoundCloud activity, as attackers can now craft convincing messages using profile-specific details. Updating passwords and enabling two-factor authentication on any account sharing the same email address is strongly advised.
Full threat analysis, exploitation vectors, and principal guidance below.
11 additional sections · verified field analysis · defensive doctrine
Querying breach corpus…
Cross-referencing exposed field types…
Resolving threat-actor attribution…
Compiling principal risk advisory…
29.8M records analyzed
About SoundCloud
SoundCloud is an online audio distribution and music streaming platform that allows artists to upload and share music, podcasts, and audio content directly with listeners. Founded in 2007 in Berlin, the platform has become a primary discovery channel for independent and emerging artists and hosts hundreds of millions of tracks. SoundCloud operates on a freemium model with paid subscription tiers and has long been known as a platform where artists can distribute music without traditional label gatekeeping.
Why They Hold Your Data
Audio-sharing and streaming platforms collect user accounts, emails, profile data, listening history, uploads, social relationships, and creator activity across music and creator workflows.
Recent Developments
SoundCloud has navigated sustained financial pressure and ownership changes through the 2020s. The company sold a majority stake to a consortium including Sirius XM in 2017. It has continued developing monetization tools for creators and has maintained its position as a key independent artist platform despite competition from Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. The December 2025 breach was the most significant security event of the recent period.
Data Points Exposed
6 verified field types
Email Address
Full Name
Geographic location
Profile Metadata
Profile Photo
Username
Breach Impact
In December 2025 SoundCloud announced it had discovered unauthorized activity on its platform. An attacker had exploited access to map publicly available SoundCloud profile data — usernames, display names, follower counts, and metadata — to the private email addresses of approximately 29.8 million users, effectively deanonymizing a large portion of the platform's registered base. SoundCloud disclosed the incident, notified affected users, and characterized the exposure as a mapping of public profile data to private contact information rather than a breach of core account credentials or financial data. No class-action litigation or regulatory enforcement action specific to this breach has been prominently documented as of early 2026.
Exploitation & Downstream Threats
• Targeted phishing campaigns using exposed email addresses | • Doxxing risk from physical address exposure
Principal Risk Advisory
What this means for a principal
A consumer-service breach: contact and account data supports phishing, account takeover and profile enrichment. For a high-profile principal the main risk is credible impersonation and enrichment of existing exposure.
What You Should Do
- Do not use unofficial 'am I affected' lookups; several are themselves harvesting operations.
How ObscureIQ Can Help
- Corpus confirmation: determine whether and where the principal (plus household and staff) appear in this dataset and which specific fields are exposed for them.
- Exposure mapping: cross-reference the exposed identifiers against broker-available data to size and prioritize the principal's wider footprint.
- ThreatWatch tuned to this incident's identifiers and misuse pattern (impersonation and targeting patterns, not generic credential monitoring).
S
Threat Actor: ShinyHuntersConfidence: High
Motivation: Financial extortion, data sale
A prolific data theft and extortion group that began as a database theft and resale actor and evolved toward SaaS-focused extortion. Recent activity involves vishing, credential harvesting, SSO compromise, and theft of customer data from cloud and SaaS environments.
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