Content Not Displaying Shortcodes

Hello,
I am having trouble displaying shortcodes correctly on my main post content. (Example – You can see all the [soundcloud id=”]. I know it’s not a problem with the plugin because no shortcodes work.)

Instead of using:

<?php the_content(); ?>

I am currently using:

<?php echo preg_replace("/\< *[img][^\>]*[.]*\>/i","",get_the_content(),1); ?>

which hides the first image from each post because my featured image is automatically displayed on top. However, even when I replaced what I’m currently using back with the normal ‘php the_content’ code it is still not displaying my shortcodes correctly. Is there a way to filter the first image out and include shortcodes via function.php OR some other workaround? I feel like it’s something easy I’m overlooking causing this error.

Thanks in advance!