Unlike Spotify or YouTube, music service Soundcloud has not yet found a way to fairly and conveniently compensate artists for streaming their music.
Last year, they partnered with several small labels and Warner Music Group in a deal where labels can choose to put ads on content or take their copyrighted material down. Known as \”On Soundcloud,\” this strategy has paid out $2 million to 100 labels and musicians that host their music on the site. CEO of Soundcloud, Alex Ljung, said that labels tend to put more of their own content onto a platform once they can start earning advertising revenue, similar to how YouTube became successful.
Merlin, which owns the rights to over 20,000 record labels, including Armada Music, has partnered with Soundcloud for the first time. It\’s a major move for the website, and a step in the right direction for fairly compensating artists.
When asked about Soundcloud, Merlin\’s CEO said \”it\’s very attractive to the artist community, it\’s very attractive to heavy music users, and it\’s very attractive to people who want to curate via mixes and mashups.\”
Read the full story from Bloomberg Business here, along with Merlin\’s and Soundcloud\’s official statements.
