SoundCloud Launches Its Subscription Tier

It's been rumored for months, and it's finally happened. SoundCloud has launched a subscription tier to its streaming service called SoundCloud Go and it's priced at what's now become the standard - $9.99 per month ($12.99 for iOS).

The fact of the matter is that SoundCloud Go seems like it's more to appease the major labels than anything. All 3 majors have now licensed their catalogs to SoundCloud in an effort to get a piece of the DJ remix space they'd been missing.

As for the consumer, there's not all that much of an advantage. The free tier provides 125+ million tracks while the SoundCloud Go offers the same plus an "expanded catalog" (no idea what that means), offline listening, and it's ad free.

One of the big problems for consumers is the lack of big names on the platform, or extensive catalog from major label artists, although the platform seems to be adding more content to Go today. Still, the majority of available songs consists of remixes or user uploaded tracks.

SoundCloud has had a major problem with DJ remixes using unlicensed material, and has had to revoke the subscriptions of many of them as a result, which has led to bad blood in the community and mass defections to MixCloud and Dubset. It's going to be difficult to get them back, if for no other reason than from a logistics standpoint of moving a catalog to a new service.

It appears that SoundCloud Go will pay artists according to their market share, which means that the top 1% will continue to enjoy a higher revenue stream regardless of whether they own the copyright of their material or not.

SoundCloud currently has 175 million active users, so even a conversion rate of 5% would make it a player in the streaming space with nearly 9 million subscribers. SoundCloud Go is only available in the U.S. market for now, but will roll out globally later this year.

By the way, you can avoid the extra $3 iOS charge by signing up on your desktop instead of your iPhone.

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SoundCloud Rolls Out Its Own Version Of Pandora

SoundCloud is angling to become a full-fledged streaming service, and it just took a big step towards that goal with the introduction to what it calls Stations.

Stations takes the the previous "Related Tracks" feature one step further by simplifying it and improving the recommendations. The result is what the company hopes will be increased music discovery.

If this sounds familiar, that's because it's just what Pandora has been doing for a number of years now,  as well as Spotify and Apple Music, but this is a first step to get SoundCloud into the same game as those large services.

Essentially, a station is generated from any track, search term, or content stream in your Collection. All you have to do is tap the three-dot menu next to a track and select "start track station" to begin. After the first track plays, SoundCloud uses your listening habits and track selections to determine the songs you'll hear next.

The feature works on both Android and iOS devices but hasn't made it to the web app yet.

My guess is that it won't have too many people giving up their Pandora accounts just yet, but it's a good first step.

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Repost Network Founder Jeff Ponchick On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

If your music is on SoundCloud, then you probably want to know about Repost Network, a service based on the YouTube multi-channel networks that can help you get paid for your streams.

Jeff Ponchick, the founder of Repost, is my guest on the podcast this week and he'll discuss how it came about and how it all works.

On the intro I'll discuss the process of purchases fake crowds, and take a look at the latest from the lab - 3D batteries that store more juice, take less time to recharge, and are safer for the environment.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

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Can You Copyright Silence?

D.J. Detweiler has been pushing SoundCloud's copyright buttons for the last few years with satirical "flutedrop" remixes of popular songs using a simple recorder (the instrument, not the machine).

The group has taken the pursuit to a new level by posting a version of John Cage's "4:33," which is Cage's conceptual piece that's nothing but 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

SoundCloud removed Detweiler's piece on the basis of copyright infringement (see the graphic on the left), not because of the silence, but because of a mashup of a Justin Bieber song within the piece.

That said, Cage's piece was a performance piece only and never recorded, mostly to bring up the question, "Can you copyright silence?"

If Cage's piece is nothing but silence, is it even possible to copy it in the first place?

Had Detweiler just placed a silent recording online and retitled it something other than "4:33," SoundCloud might not have taken it down, but would the recording then still be infringing on Cage's copyright?

I don't know the answer here, but it does bring up yet another deep philosophical question - "Can total silence be music, and if so, how much of it equals a song, or at least enough to earn a copyright?"

What do you think?

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Could This App Be The Instagram Of Music?

Three undergrads from Tufts University have launched a new app that's catching on like wildfire. It's called Cymbal, and many have called it the "Instagram of Music" because of its less-is-more user interface.

Cymbal describes itself as "music powered by friends, not algorithms." That's because users are allowed to share just one song at a time along with album art.

The whole idea is that the user gets to post that one song that's most important in their life at that moment.

Like Instagram, Cymbal uses a home feed, personal profile, followers, likes, comments, hashtags and tags.

You can share tracks from Soundcloud or Spotify, and since it was created from the ground up as an iOS app (an Android version is coming), it's perfectly at home where more and more do their listening - via the phone.

There's less than a million users at the moment, but the app seems to be coming on strong, so look out for more about Cymbal in the future.

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Universal Music To Get A Piece Of Soundcloud

Soundcloud is trying hard to go legit and if industry insiders have it correctly, a deal with Universal Music is imminent. This would be the second of the 3 major labels to license their music to Soundcloud, the first being Warner Music Group in November of last year.

As with most licensing deals these days, Universal is said to have pushed for equity in Soundcloud as well as an advance in exchange for the deal. Warners already owns 5% of the company, and it's said that Universal will actually receive a larger piece based on its market share, which is much larger than WMG.

This is a continuing trend in music distribution today where the 3 major labels will not grant a license unless they receive equity in the company. This worked out well for Warners in the Beats Music deal when Apple purchased the company, as the holding company that owns Warners walked away with a hefty profit.

The major labels are hoping that happens again with Spotify (they all hold equity), and now also with Soundcloud.

Of course, none of that income goes to the artist, falling instead to the company's bottom lines. Once again the artist only sees a trickle of the major income. Same as it ever was.

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Users Up In Arms As Soundcloud Begins To Remove Content

If you're been using Soundcloud to distribute your songs you know that it's a wonderful service that's almost too inexpensive to be true. The problem is that the company hasn't been able to be profitable and now they're under some pressure from investors to turn that around.

In an effort to stem the tide and perhaps even turn a profit, Soundcloud recently entered into licensing deals with Warner Music Group and Merlin (the organization that represents a large number of indie labels), but part of that deal meant that the platform had to begin to enforce copyright rules.

As a result, last week Soundcloud began an offensive on variety of copyright violations including unlicensed tracks, tracks that include unlicensed samples, remixes with unlicensed tracks and even bootleg remixes that that bear a recognizable resemblance to an original. Not only that, the platform has even deleted accounts of users that it deems to be major offenders.

This has caused a group of Soundcloud users, mostly DJs, to go ballistic since they're the ones that are mostly being targeted. That said, any musician with an unauthorized cover song or sample could also feek the company's wrath.

To be clear, Soundcloud has long been a welcome home for copyright violations, but it's only now that it's had the will to actually clamp down. That said, money (or lack of it) has a way of making you do things that you don't necessarily want to, something that musicians, artists and bands are faced with every day.

A sample takedown notice

UPDATE: Sources are saying that Soundcloud has also reached a licensing agreement with Universal Music Group, which might further explain the takedown spree last week.

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Muzooka - The One Stop Submission Engine

It's always been difficult to get new music in front of industry professionals and maybe that's the way it should be in order to keep the quality bar high. That being said, most managers, agents, producers, label execs and producers are daily faced with a heap of email and physical press releases, CDs, videos, links, bios, and anything else trying to get their attention by up and coming artists.

Muzooka, a startup submission engine aiming to make the discovery process easier for both artists and industry pros, wants to change all that.

The beauty is that artists upload their music to the intended pro's account, and then highlight any 10 second clip that they feel will garner attention. The music pro can then sift through numerous submissions quickly without having to go outside to YouTube or Soundcloud, or even listen to a CD.

The platform is gaining some traction with a wide variety of industry pros, such as Epic Records A&R EVP Sha Money, producers Rodney Jerkins and Tony Maserati, and venues like The Basement in Nashville. Radio is also on board with Nashville radio station Lightning 100, and long-time music editor and KCRW radio host Chris Douridas.

The best part of Muzooka is that it's free for both artists and industry pros, unlike other services like Reverbnation and Sonic Bids that offer similar features.

This can definitely be a very cool and helpful service if it catches on industry wide.

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Film And Television Composer Rich Walters On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

On this episode of my Inner Circle podcast, I'm pleased to have television and film composer Rich Walters as my guest.

Rich has been nominated for 2 Emmys and and 2 Canadian Screen awards, and his most recent credits include the Sci-Fi Network show Olympus, and the feature film Chappie (with Hans Zimmer).

He'll tell us what it's like to be a composer on major projects yet live outside of Los Angeles, as well as what a music editor does, a job that many not in the post business find completely mysterious.

In the intro I'll take a look at how music sales are up all over the world, the new Soundcloud subscription service, Rode's purchase of Aphex and Guitar Center being sued by the National Labor Relations Board.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes or Stitcher.

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A Soundcloud Subscription Tier Is Coming

It's been rumored for months, but it looks like a subscription tier for Soundcloud will soon be a reality, as the company CTO recently confirmed.

While the exact details haven't been revealed yet, it's believed that the service will offer a free tier with a capped number of streams and downloads per month, and a paid tier where both are unlimited.

One of the challenges is changing current users into paid subscribers, since the service has long touted itself as a free service. In fact, Soundcloud has used that as a selling point from the beginning.

The company is currently under pressure both from investors to make money, and from the major labels pay royalties, however, so it looks like this will be changing soon.

That said, Soundcloud hasn't been entirely free for some time, as it offers both Pro ($6 per month) and Pro Unlimited ($15 per month) tiers for creators that want increased storage and analytics.

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Soundcloud Streams To Be Limited

In a move that may upset many users, SoundCloud will introduce limits on the number of streams outside it's network as of July 1st. That means that any song played via a third-party app will be limited to 15,000 streams in a 24 hour period.

SoundCloud said that the move was to counter "an increasing number of applications that abuse content."

To be clear, this does not affect songs that are embedded and streamed directly from the SoundCloud app. The limit only affects its API.

Many developers who use the SoundCloud API are up in arms because they were only given 15 days notice, which they claim isn't enough to reprogram their app.

The service is facing increasing competition with Apple Music about to come online, and YouTube's Music Key waiting in the wings, so this isn't a great time to be upsetting anyone in its ecosystem.

You can read SoundCloud's announcement directly here.

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Soundcloud And Warner Music Make A Deal

Soundcloud has been trying to become more than just a way for artists, bands, and DJs to showcase their music, and the service took a big step forward yesterday with a new licensing deal with one of the major labels in Warner Music.

The deal means that Warners and Warners artists (hopefully) will get paid anytime someone plays one of their songs on the platform. This includes any of the very popular DJ mashups that the service is becoming noted for.

Warners will also take a cut of the ad revenue generated, as well as a cut of the revenue from Soundcloud's yet-to-be-introduced subscription service.

On top of that, the Wall Street Journal reports that Warners will also get a 3 to 5% stake in Soundcloud as part of the deal.

What the Warners deal does is legitimize Soundcloud in the eyes of other labels and in the investment community, allowing the service to raise additional capital and make the next major label deals a bit easier. For artists, it means that they'll finally get paid if someone plays their music on the platform (providing they're signed to Warners, at least at the moment).

On a related side note, I always suggest that people use Soundcloud if they want me to listen to their tracks. It's so much more convenient that sending a file.

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Getting Paid For Soundcloud Plays

Soundcloud has made the ultimate move of monetizing the platform by deciding to introduce advertising on the platform for the first time, it was announced recently. The good part about this is it gives artists a chance to actually get paid for their streams just like on YouTube.

Until now, the company derived its revenue primarily from Pro accounts, but as of August 21st the company introduced a new strategy designed to give users new tools for uploading and tracking engagement, growing Soundcloud's audience, and introducing adverts into the platform.

Soundcloud will implement a new partner program called On Soundcloud that provides a brand new Premier tier, which is invite only at the moment and includes advertising from 5 different components - native (not sure what that one is yet), audio, display, channel sponsorship and contests. The first five sponsors are Red Bull, Jaguar, Sonos, Squarespace and Comedy Central.

What's interesting is that Soundcloud doesn't have signed deals with the major labels in place yet, but has decided to launch anyway. That said, the company is said to be in talks about the agreement, and expects to have something in place by the time it rolls out its new subscription service. For the moment, the program is only available in the US.

Bottom line - Soundcloud is trying to become an audio-only YouTube, and having a revenue model in place in order to pay artists for their participation goes a long way to that end.

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Major Labels Buying Into Soundcloud Sets It Up For Acquisition

There are multiple well-founded rumors abounding that the three major record labels will soon purchase anywhere from 9 to 14 percent of the Soundcloud streaming music service. On the surface this might seem like a natural progression for both Soundcloud and the labels (who have done this sort of thing before), but there’s more here than meets the eye.

First of all, it’s nothing new for the major labels to invest in a distribution network that they have at their mercy. The majors received a piece of Spotify in the deal that allowed it to open shop in the US, and there are reports that they’re currently pushing for its sale at a price as high as $10 billion (good luck getting that price). Then you have the case of Universal Music, which had a 14 percent stake in Beats Music that resulted in a cool $400 million or so payout when it was acquired by Apple. 

These kinds of investments are potentially more profitable than the labels core business, at least in the short term. Streaming services need licenses from the labels to operate; the labels oblige in exchange for some cash and a piece of the action, then cash out when the service is sold to a bigger fish down the line. The best part (at least for the labels) is that most of that money heads to the label’s bottom line. The artists who’s music makes this opportunity possible in the first place do see some reward, but it’s pennies on the dollar compared to what their labels pocket.

So here we have Soundcloud, which has gone from a place where indie musicians can store their song mixes for easy fan playback, to a much larger entity currently filled with cover songs and copyrighted loops and samples. The problem is that the company has no license agreements with the majors in place for this content, and have drawn their wrath as a result. Read more on Forbes.

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3 Reasons Why Twitter Killed The Soundcloud Deal

Twitter has been trying hard to get into the music business, but keeps on coming up empty. First there was its ill-conceived #Music service which died on the vine about a year after it was launched due to low adoption numbers, and now the company reportedly has nixed a deal to buy the Berlin-based Soundcloud music streaming service. 

It was only last week that a deal between the two looked imminent, but the Twitter looks to have bowed to pressure from stockholders and the investment community alike, both of which took a dim view of the acquisition.

On one hand, Twitter-Soundcloud looked to be synergistic in may ways. Twitter has a large number of influential music celebrities that use the platform and have extremely large followings, so incorporating some sort of a music service seems like an ideal match. Soundcloud has roughly the same number of active users as Twitter, and any added users (there’s some overlap between the two) could possibly provide a needed boost in Twitter’s plateaued user numbers, which in turn could help it’s slowly dwindling stock price. That’s the theory, but as we well know, reality is frequently a different story, especially in this case. Here are three reasons why Twitter might have chosen not to consummate the deal.

Reason #1: User Attrition

While Soundcloud might look attractive because of its 250 million or so users and $700 million estimated valuation, it has it’s own set of problems. Like Twitter, there’s ongoing user attrition, especially with the DJ community, who are leaving for other services like MixCloud, MixCrate and Play.fm. 

One of the reasons is that Soundcloud uses Audible Magic technology to identify unlicensed songs, which then flags Soundcloud, who then issues a take-down notice much like YouTube does in similar cases. Unfortunately Audible Magic, or any other content identification service for that matter, isn’t perfect and many times users are directed to take down their own compositions. No one wants the hassle of having to defend their own material, and the three strikes and your account is cancelled policy forces many users to make the decision to jump to another service. Read more on Forbes.

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5 Ways To Get Free Music Promotion

Artists and bands often complain about the cost of promotion, but thanks to the Internet there are more ways than ever to do it for free. Marcus Taylor outlined 49 ways over on Music Think Tank. Here are 5 of them.


#1 Host a free virtual show With Stageit.com.

Stageit.com has long been a favourite music marketing tool. The fact that it’s free is just the icing on the cake. If you’ve not used Stageit before, it’s essential a ‘Skype for bands’, where you can perform gigs from your kitchen to fans all over the World. Many good friends have used it and also found that it was a good way to raise a few hundred dollars for a couple of hours of performing.

#2 Add a Bands In Town app to Your Facebook Page.

BandsinTown is a must-have app for your Facebook Page. In short, it displays all of your upcoming gig dates in a slick-looking Facebook App. A great way of passively raising awareness of your upcoming shows.

#3 Create a FanDistro project to help charities & reward your fans.

FanDistro is another favourite. After creating your project page and sending it out to your fans, each fan receives a unique link, which they can send to their friends. If their friends then share your music or buy any of your products, they are rewarded with free merch and 20% of the sales go to a charity in the fan’s name. FanDistro is a brilliant way of increasing your social media engagement – artists like Cosmo Jarvis generated ~19 new fans for each fan who shared his music on the site!

#4 Build an app for your music with BandApp.

Created by Adam Perry, BandApp is a great platform for getting a free mobile app for your band.

#5 Upload your music to Soundcloud.

Soundcloud is arguably one of the best sites to host your music on, especially now that they’ve announced heavy integration with many of Google’s services. If you haven’t already, upload your music on Soundcloud, tag it well, and encourage fans to leave comments on the tracks.

Read the rest of Marcus' list on Music Think Tank. Many are UK-centric, but there's still lots of great ideas if you don't reside there.

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Soundcloud Goes Pro

SoundCloud, the song hosting service that provides instant audio streaming of your material, has just announced a new subscription service called SoundCloud Pro. The new Pro and Pro Unlimited plans replace the previous Premium Lite, Solo, Pro and Pro Plus programs.

The company didn't mention many details in their press release last week, but it leads one to believe that this has much to do with its recent agreement to be the audio backbone of Twitter Music. In fact, you could see this coming when SoundCloud basically rebuilt it's platform in December, improving the user interface and making it Flash-free.

My guess here is that SoundCloud saw in Twitter Music an opportunity to scale in a way not possible otherwise. They could get massive growth in a short period of time, which is a way for their investors to make their money back and more. In fact, SoundCloud received $50 million in January 2012 from KPCB, one of the most revered venture firms in Silicon Valley. KPCB also happens to be an investor in Twitter as well, so this collaboration was probably baked way back then and only coming out of the oven now.

While you could look at all this cynically as just a money grab, I don't think it is. On all sides there are well-regarded, highly competent people that have a tradition of caring for the customer as well as for making money. That's why I look forward to both the new SoundCloud and Twitter Music. What we see now is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

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Twitter Jumps Into The Music Discovery Game

Twitter Music Test Tweet

Music rumors at SXSW keep swirling, and the latest one is that Twitter is getting ready to enter into music discovery thanks to their recent purchase of We Are Hunted. WAH scoured the web to find new artists that didn't necessarily have much visibility, but fit with your playlist tastes.

Once again, music discovery is the holy grail for most of the deep pockets in the industry, and a startup with any kind of working discovery technology is bound to find money or be purchased in no time. The reasons?

• Music discovery means it's easier to find new acts that fit the listener's tastes, which grows the industry.

• More new artists means less reliance on old catalog for the labels as a revenue generator.

• Being found by a discovery engine makes it a lot easier (or even possible) for a new artist to jump out of pack of hundreds of thousands of releases every year.

• Bottom line: a healthier industry with increased revenue streams, which hopefully benefits everyone, although the big dogs always seem to benefit the most.

On the surface, Twitter seems the perfect delivery vehicle for music discovery. Imagine that you tweet that you're listening to something and add a few hashtags to indicate same. The discovery engine reads that, finds a match of new artists, and tweets you back. If it knows what your music delivery platform is choice is, the links are to that platform. This is just speculation on may part, but seems like it would be a great way to implement it.

The leaks about Twitter Music (the name of the new standalone app) are different though. It will stream from Soundcloud, and have a number of tabs for song selections. Suggested recommends songs based on your tastes, #NowPlaying brings in song links from people you follow on Twitter that use hashtags, Popular brings in the current trending songs, and Emerging tracks up and coming artists.

The fact that it's linked to Soundcloud is interesting, since it's more of a storage platform than a delivery service. First of all, will artists and songwriters get paid? Who determines what songs can be used by Twitter Music? What happens if your songs are hosted but you haven't registered?

Supposedly there will also be links to iTunes previews, but there's no info about connections to other services yet. Of course, everything but the purchase of We Are Hunted are well-placed rumors reported by several insiders (check out CNET for more), so much can change before the service is even launched.

All of this means that music delivery and discovery is getting a lot more exciting. There may be some questions about Twitter Music at the moment, but it's a welcome addition to our music world.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

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Is Your Website Still So 2009?

Technology marches on, and as we know, the pace seems to get faster and faster all the time. The problem is, we all have to keep up in order to both stay relevant and keep our fans engaged. Now comes some research courtesy of getsharesquare.com that are an eye opener about the majority of artist websites in terms of just how up to date they really are.

• Not all that many use social networking buttons. 29% have a Facebook Like button, 12% have a Twitter Follow widget, and only 6% have a Google +1 button.

• About a third are still using Flash, which can result in missing or broken content. iPhones and iPads don't use Flash, and most people hate it these days anyway.

• 90% of sites don't recognize mobile browsers, and don't forget, the world we live in now is a mobile one.

• Some are still using Framesets, which went out around 1999 or so. Come on people, get into the real world!

• The most popular music player is Soundcloud, followed by YouTube, Vimeo, Bandcamp and jPlayer.

• 33% of the survey respondents said their most frequent complaint about an artist site was text that was so small that it required zooming.

• 31% stated their biggest complaint was video content that was broken or unavailable. 

• 28% said they hated when buttons or links were too small to click.

• 20% hated when streaming music was broken or unavailable.

• 17% complained that recent news and event info was difficult to find.

• 29% said that most missed the ability to exchange an email address for free content.

• 25% said they really missed the ability to download an artist's song.

• 21% complained that they couldn't purchase tickets or merch directly from the website.

This is a fascinating report in that it indicates that a lot more commerce could be going on if only artists would pay more attention to their websites. Many artists take their site for granted, but it should be the main point where all of your fan contact is directed since it's the one portal online that you have total control of. Now get going on redesigning your site (I am as well.).

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.