Soundcloud To Have Ads and Royalty Collection with Subscription Service

The day has finally come for SoundCloud to legitimize itself, and put it’s days of free content and unrestricted uploads in the past.  This excerpt from The New York Times is an explanation of the strategical pivot:

“In many ways the move is a reaction to industry pressure to license content and produce revenue. It also reflects SoundCloud’s complex relationship with record labels, which use the service to promote new releases and even hunt for new talent but have been irritated by their inability to make money from SoundCloud’s millions of listeners.”

What does this mean for the content creators, and more explicitly, DJs?  Well, part of the licensing deal struck with entertainment companies to host advertisements on the site was in order to provide revenue for the labels and artists whose content will now be monetized.

“For its new program, Premier, SoundCloud will sign licensing agreements with music companies that will allow it to run advertising on its service. Most of the revenue from those ads will go to the content provider, said Jeff Toig, SoundCloud’s chief business officer, although he declined to be more specific.”

SoundCloud has negotiated with these major and independent labels over equity stakes in the company in exchange to not be sued for past copyright violations.

“The first advertisers include Red Bull, Jaguar and Comedy Central, whose ads will run only in conjunction with licensed content. Among the initial content partners are two major music publishers, Sony/ATV and BMG; the distributors INgrooves and Seed; the comedy site Funny or Die; and a number of independent artists, including the Washington rapper GoldLink.”

That means if the record labels have the power to enforce their copyright restrictions on unlicensed content, it does not bode well for those artists that continue to upload bootlegs, unofficial remixes, and mixes.  So, what started as SoundCloud’s appeal to up and coming producers and djs will force music discoverers to look for these artists elsewhere.

Fans that are used to ad-free listening and creators that are used to unrestricted content are going to need to either adapt or pay for it.

What do you think? Is SoundCloud’s defensive move a giving into the system, or is it a step in the direction of where the music industry should be headed?

Read the full article by The New York Times here!

Soundcloud Vs. DJs | A Digital Debacle

So, for the first time in Soundcloud’s existence it is experiencing some real flack for their copyright policy.  Most consumers of the site will shrug it off and find the content they want elsewhere.  However, the argument is that Content Creators and Djs are now having their mixed content taken down and justifiably want answers for why their accounts, along with all of the data garnered, is being deleted.

*This post will be a thread for the latest in developments*

---

The dispute remains between record labels and owners of digital content vs. DJs/producers that include content in their mixes (as has been done since the by dawn of the DJ age).  Even content curators and regular users creating their own playlists are receiving these takedown notices.

In a response to Soundcloud deactivating his account, a DJ that goes by Mr. Brainz presented a counterargument in which he inquired where the line had been drawn for taking down his content and where virtually every other DJs material falls in the scheme of copyright violations.

Owners have the authority to notify Soundcloud to take down the content where its use isn’t approved for use.  One of those entities is Universal Music and the artists they represent.  As it were, Soundcloud announced that their jurisdiction was handed over to Universal to disable accounts at their discretion.  The news of the authoritative shift came after a complaint was filed by a customer whose account was disabled.

 

Kaskade is no stranger to mash-ups and curating material publicly.  Like him, many believe that it’s major corporations like these that are killing the musical vibe that bring fans and artists together in the first place.

On Kaskade’s blog, he addressed his personal situation and made the matter open to the public. He starts off by saying:

Recently when I posted on Twitter about Soundcloud pulling 70% of the content I had housed on their site, I wasn’t expecting the resonance to go so wide. There was outrage from fans, there was commiseration from artist friends, feeling the same frustration I do. There was my ex-label, tweeting apologies and promising to help. All the usual suspects started writing on their blogs about it. Some publications sympathized with my “Down with the man” war-cry, others more or less said, “Suck it up, buttercup.”

Here’s the thing. I’m not in the right here. I’m definitely, without question, black-and-white in the wrong.

That’s not to say I am wrong, though.

Read More…

With that little nugget of truth, it’s hard to say there is a right or a wrong.