On your first point, 100% yes. I used to run a relatively popular new music blog, and have several friends who still do. SoundCloud used to make up 98% of my blog post music embeds. And that is absolutely where they went wrong, even from the get go. It would have been insanely easy for them in the last decade to implement: one-click .mp3 purchases for individual songs, artist merchandise stores, ticket sales, etc. You name it.

Instead they made a conscious decision to push ahead with bizarre business strategies and without providing any meaningful functionality updates to their core service (I even think they regressed in this regard, the dumpster fire that was song reposting was the final nail in the coffin for me).

Honestly I think the service needs to make a graceful exit to let another service emerge who actually wants to push things forward for developing new artists.