Honestly, for a rant that detailed about how corporations are ruining the internet, I kinda expected OP to know how to save songs off SoundCloud.
The worst part about this "modern web" for me is that mobile browsers can't seem to download a file from a website using simple HTTP authentication, because someone thought it would be a great fucking idea to write a separate app to manage downloads, and they never thought that someone might still be using HTTP simple authentication in 2014. So no, sorry, you can't download that file because our developers needed to write yet another app and didn't consider your use case.
I came to say that. Don't believe in the cloud. Just own the things you like to consume more than once, just save them on your hard drive, and sync all of it on all your devices. It requires some setup and attention but it works very well. I do need all the pictures of my family on all my devices, I don't need them on a cloud. Same for the music I love.
"The cloud" is many things. A streaming service is clearly flaky; a storage service like S3 or Nearline where you can put an encrypted offsite copy of your files is helpful, despite both being "cloud" services.
Firefox for Android can download files from websites using authentication just fine; it uses its own download manager that gets passed the authentication info from the main browser.
2. Open your browser's Developer Tools
3. Navigate to song page
4. Click on network tab in Developer Tools
5. Press the big play logo on the song
6. Look for the request for the MP3 file
7. Save link to computer
Honestly, for a rant that detailed about how corporations are ruining the internet, I kinda expected OP to know how to save songs off SoundCloud.
The worst part about this "modern web" for me is that mobile browsers can't seem to download a file from a website using simple HTTP authentication, because someone thought it would be a great fucking idea to write a separate app to manage downloads, and they never thought that someone might still be using HTTP simple authentication in 2014. So no, sorry, you can't download that file because our developers needed to write yet another app and didn't consider your use case.