SoundCloud to become a Spotify with user generated music content?
SoundCloud has plans to go completely legal and pay royalties to labels. That is good news because lots of labels have already pulled or blocked their music from the service, and not only because it has become a free harbour for illegal streaming. The only way for labels nowadays to protect their music from being abused is to audio(finger)print the music (via the YouTube content ID service Zefr) which in return caused a lot of paperwork – track per track – when labels themselves wanted to use the service for streaming a few tracks for free.
A contract from the Berlin based company which handles legal licensing with independent music publishers popped up online (you can read it below) showing how SoundCloud wants to reach out to the music industry.
According to the document SoundCloud would pay 10,5% of its revenue including ads or about 22% of what it makes on sound recording rights. The contract also lays out plans for two potential premium listening tiers to be launched in the future to complement its ad-supported free tier. These ‘Additional Services’ would let users pay for an audio and visual ad-free experience (and download a limited amount of music) similar to syncing options from services like Spotify.
Soon, your own mashups and bootleg remixes will be legalised and monetised so it looks like it. If you have the time and energy, you can read the document below.
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Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
