SoundCloud Plans a Subscription Service to Access Its Music

There’s good news on the way for rightsholders with music on SoundCloud – the company will be adding a subscription tier to its service later this year, according to the company’s CTO and co-founder Eric Wahlforss.

For sheer scale, SoundCloud is one of the biggest streaming services, with 100 million available tracks and 175 million users (compared with Spotify’s 75 million).

SoundCloud will have a lot to prove to the labels with their new subscription service, especially since Sony Music recently began pulling out from the platform for “a lack of monetization opportunities”.

Wahlfross didn’t specify what subscribers will get that non-paying users won’t. The company has already reached licensing agreements with Warner Music and Merlin, an agency representing more than 20,000 smaller recording labels. If users want to listen to SoundCloud’s entire catalog without ads, they will allegedly have to shell out even more.

Mr. Wahlforss also stated “we’re focused on building it as a stand-alone business” creating curiosity over whether the free-public version of the streaming service will be continued after the launch of subscription based service, whatever the case may seem it’s likely that SoundCloud means serious business now.

The additional revenue would ostensibly be used for music publishers seeking to get royalties for tracks that are part of a remix or DJ set.