Soundcloud has had a reputation of late of strangling creativity. Artists big and small have complained of Soundcloud taking down material that they have the right to upload and stream. Ryan Raddon, who you may know better as Kaskade, said goodbye to Soundcloud in 2014 after the website removed over 70% of the content on his profile. Part of the content removed was unauthorized mashups, but some of the content that was initially signed to Ultra was authorized to be hosted. Kaskade spoke out against this, admitting wrongdoing for uploading music that was not able to be legally shared, but he painted a much bigger picture: Music should be available to be discovered because one like on a track can then translate into a fan buying more material and supporting artists from buying tickets to shows. In his words, “Free the music, and your cash will follow.”
Soundcloud hasn’t liberated music from copyright notices, but it did recently sign a licensing deal with Universal Music Group. This expands the inventory of artists’ music that can be stored on Soundcloud and makes it a stronger competitor against services like Spotify. Universal joins Warner Music Group and Merlin, two other labels that partner with Soundcloud. The only hold out among the three big labels is Sony.
Soundcloud has also announced plans to launch a subscription service. Details on what this will look like are not clear, but it’s rumored that the first subscription tier will be ad free, with restrictions on downloads. The second tier is rumored to provide unlimited access to music. It remains to be seen if this will be enough to appease critics of Soundcloud, but between averaging over 175 million unique listeners monthly and their new licensing agreement, Soundcloud may just hang around a little longer.
I was listening to electronic dance music without even knowing it when I was listening to Jock Jams in the 90s. Fast forward to my senior year in high school and I had discovered Fatboy Slim. I have been listening to edm ever since and love writing about new sounds, good sounds, and the music that makes us move.
