SoundCloud announce major deal with Sony Music, what does it mean for you?

In a recent blog-post from the SoundCloud executives, arguably the internet’s biggest music platform has joined forces with the industry’s biggest music corporation, Sony. With copyright battles and consumer rants piling over the last few years, the deal was simply inevitable.

But what does this mean for us? Dance music owns a significant chunk of the SoundCloud market so it’s definitely going to have an affect on producers, listeners and independent publishers.

Firstly, SoundCloud tells us that listeners are going to find more music than ever (since a lot of Sony music is going to make it’s way on the site) and producers too are going to love it. Once the deal passes implementation, SoundCloud will be monetized. This means we’re going to see ads on the website in different forms. Producers affiliated to Sony will now make revenue off these ads but this could also mean unsigned acts could make money off their own uploads. A significant change to their revenue model as SoundCloud has solely been profiting over the years from paid subscriptions (by creators) and has never really charged the listener.

The changes SoundCloud will experience through the deal is similar to when Google took over YouTube and monetised the platform, drastically improving conditions for creators but it did take it’s tax on the viewers/listeners. Only time will tell how things span out, perhaps this is the deal that everyone’s just been waiting for.