SOUNDCLOUD VOWS TO START PAYING ARTISTS FOR STREAMING

Following a bumpy 12 months, SoundCloud announced in October that its annual revenue was up a whopping 43% to almost $28 million. 

Thanks to the spike, the platform has released a statement vowing to begin paying artists for the music they stream. Some acts are already being paid for their involvement with the platform, thanks to SoundCloud's Premier partner program, which invites specific acts to stream their music. 

SoundCloud is aiming to gradually make the partner program open to everyone, promising that there will be a “significant and ongoing increase in the number of independent artists invited to make money from the work they share on SoundCloud.”

Check out the full statement from SoundCloud below. 

Today marks another milestone for our revenue sharing program. Over the past several months, our team has streamlined and further automated the steps and processes to setup creators in our revenue sharing program – enabling us to invite more people, faster. This means a significant and ongoing increase in the number of independent artists invited to make money from the work they share on SoundCloud.

The SoundCloud Go and advertising launches across a number of countries are powering increases in revenues, which in turn allows us to invite more independent creators to the Premier partner program to share revenue. While the Premier program will continue to be invite only for now, our goal to eventually open the program up to everyone who shares their work on SoundCloud hasn’t changed. If you’re interested in becoming a part of the SoundCloud Premier program, click here to let us know.

We’ve rolled out the new processes to a group of creators today. Over the coming months, we look forward to a more widespread rollout where we’ll invite more and more independent creators from around the world to join.