the long standing problem of such new media companies such as soundcloud is a revenue model. What is their revenue model? ads? sale of music (ala itunes style)? Mix of both? sponsorship from artists trying to promoting themselves?
As an artist SoundCloud is something you want to pay for. You get better stats (location, source if it's an embed, soundCloud users who have listened to you), customisable embed widgets, and more storage space for your uploads (them limit if by time, not file size). If you see a SoundCloud user with a little orange star beside their name they are a paying member and there seem to be quite a lot based on what I see when using it.
Uploads are limited unless you buy a premium account.
You also get access to more stats. To get access to the referers of your listeners, you must pay for the top account. This is the key IMO.