SoundCloud is going to give a breath of fresh air to independent musicians through a new pricing structure, which will take effect from next April. With this, the veteran platform specialized in hosting audio clips, which many artists have seen as an interesting way to share their musical projects over the Internet, tries to be fairer to independent musicians.
This pricing structure comes at a time when, due to the pandemic, they have not been able to perform live concerts for a long time, in addition to the fact that they have been experiencing difficulties for a long time in obtaining income in other ways since they have not been able to find a place on the main audio streaming platforms, and also because fewer and fewer music tracks are being purchased on physical media.
Soundcloud: A change that will benefit them amid a pandemic
According to the SoundCloud: “Royalties generated by followers are a more equitable and transparent way for independent artists who monetize directly with SoundCloud to get paid. The more fans listening on SoundCloud and listening to your music, the more you get paid.”
Under the above model, the money from your dedicated followers goes into a giant pool that pays artists based on their share of total streams. That model mainly benefits the megastars.
Thus, the more time followers spend listening to a particular independent musician’s tracks, the more money the latter will receive for it, taking into consideration many variables, including total listening time, the type of account of the followers, and with that also whether he or she has heard ads along the way in case of free accounts, among others.
Those independent artists who are already part of the platform, or who want to join to make themselves known monetize their musical projects, will have all the information they need to have through an updated support page.
In this way, SoundCloud joins the trend of some other services, which have also sought to be fairer and more equitable with independent music artists through adjustments in their income formulas for them, a huge help amid a pandemic that has left them without their main revenue streams.