4 ms·

SoundCloud, if you want to make money off of me, a devoted listener and user of the platform for 7 or 8 years, it is really easy: Create a frictionless way for

SoundCloud, if you want to make money off of me, a devoted listener and user of the platform for 7 or 8 years, it is really easy: Create a frictionless way for me to send a few dollars to artists hosting music on your platform, and you take a cut. I don't want to pay $10 or $20 every month that gets dispersed into the ether. I want to directly thank the DJs and creators that enable me to be productive during the day and relax at night, a few dollars at a time.

mikodin 9y ago
I second this! Make me have a subscription for $7 a month, but that money goes directly to an artist I choose and then take a cut.
- orangejewce 9y ago
  So, you want the twitch.tv model then?
  - shidoshi 9y ago
    I actually don't see that as a bad concept. It might make Amazon/Twitch curious about how they might do the same, but competition is good.
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    Or patreon too
- Le_SDT 9y ago
  You could have a monthly fee and decide what percentage of it you want to go to specific artists. If you listen a lot to an artist the app could ask you if you want to transfer some percents from one artist to this one. That is a feature that I would personally love to use.
ff_ 9y ago
YES! This is the model we should move to in music, media, and arts in general. I think the subscription model is the most valid, but what happens e.g. with Spotify is that most of my subscription goes to a small artists I don't care about. The right way to do it is: take my subscription, take a cut, split the rest to the artists that I listened to based on the amount of playing time I put on each of them.
paradite 9y ago
This is indeed a good strategy as seen for twitch, but for artists there are many other competing channels to give money: I personally use SoundCloud to find music and buy them on iTunes (links are usually included in the description and artists would definitely get a cut from Apple). I believe buying merchandise and attending concerts would be popular as well.
deco 9y ago
I've always wondered why they never built features to allow fans to pay artists directly on the platform. It seems like it could have been viable, even if they had to implement a manual review / whitelisting process to make sure an artist has appropriate rights to sell a song while preventing people from selling bootlegs and unlicensed DJ mixes. Even taking a 10-15% cut, compared to Apple's 30%, would probably have generated significant revenue. The 'Buy' buttons on songs and playlists that can be linked to any URL have been a part of the product for as long as I can remember, and for the majority of artists those buttons have been the only way to earn money from being on SoundCloud (aside from less directly related things like parlaying SoundCloud popularity into touring revenue). Instead of SoundCloud collecting payments when this button is clicked by a user, they've instead sent all of this traffic off to iTunes, Bandcamp, and any number of other retail and streaming outlets artists choose to link to. Quick ways to spend money on SoundCloud with a saved payment method could've opened up all kinds of other businesses for SC to tap into such as ticket sales, merch, etc. I'm not a huge fan of speculating on what could of been with companies, especially when they're in trying times like SC is now, but I can't help but wonder how the last few years could've played out differently if SC had stayed focused on an artist + fan platform instead of moving into more traditional major label catalog streaming.
Snowdax 9y ago
Oh man, I hadn't thought of this before but yeah I'd funnel a few quid to the right guys. Like Koan Sound are late on releasing their first full album, I'd pay to even just get an inside sample of the unfinished product right now.
dkersten 9y ago
I completely agree with this. I already pay random people on patreon, let me do the same for musicians I like. While on that topic, I really hate that in Spotify the portion of my money that goes to artists is distributed between all song plays instead of just _my_ song plays. I want the artists that I like to get my money, not bieber or whoever.
beisner 9y ago
Something like a Patreon for music, with a model more customized to the SoundCloud community and use case. Direct crowdfunding for music, but also as a platform for discovery and consumption.
azinman2 9y ago
Kind of a YouTube model? Is this not currently possible on SoundCloud? (I don’t actually know...) The problem is how to pay for the commercial licenses for all the songs free users listen to, or that you listen to but don’t support, in addition to their overhead. YouTube eventually figured this out, but it took them a long time and they had the benefit of being part of Google (cash, talent, existing ad network & tech, huge audience, etc). SoundCloud at least has the benefit of hosting audio instead of video, so their bandwidth and storage costs are far lower.

mikodin 9y ago

I second this! Make me have a subscription for $7 a month, but that money goes directly to an artist I choose and then take a cut.

orangejewce 9y ago
So, you want the twitch.tv model then?
- shidoshi 9y ago
  I actually don't see that as a bad concept. It might make Amazon/Twitch curious about how they might do the same, but competition is good.
- dawnerd 9y ago
  Or patreon too
Le_SDT 9y ago
You could have a monthly fee and decide what percentage of it you want to go to specific artists. If you listen a lot to an artist the app could ask you if you want to transfer some percents from one artist to this one. That is a feature that I would personally love to use.

ff_ 9y ago

YES! This is the model we should move to in music, media, and arts in general. I think the subscription model is the most valid, but what happens e.g. with Spotify is that most of my subscription goes to a small artists I don't care about. The right way to do it is: take my subscription, take a cut, split the rest to the artists that I listened to based on the amount of playing time I put on each of them.

paradite 9y ago

This is indeed a good strategy as seen for twitch, but for artists there are many other competing channels to give money: I personally use SoundCloud to find music and buy them on iTunes (links are usually included in the description and artists would definitely get a cut from Apple). I believe buying merchandise and attending concerts would be popular as well.

deco 9y ago

I've always wondered why they never built features to allow fans to pay artists directly on the platform. It seems like it could have been viable, even if they had to implement a manual review / whitelisting process to make sure an artist has appropriate rights to sell a song while preventing people from selling bootlegs and unlicensed DJ mixes. Even taking a 10-15% cut, compared to Apple's 30%, would probably have generated significant revenue. The 'Buy' buttons on songs and playlists that can be linked to any URL have been a part of the product for as long as I can remember, and for the majority of artists those buttons have been the only way to earn money from being on SoundCloud (aside from less directly related things like parlaying SoundCloud popularity into touring revenue). Instead of SoundCloud collecting payments when this button is clicked by a user, they've instead sent all of this traffic off to iTunes, Bandcamp, and any number of other retail and streaming outlets artists choose to link to. Quick ways to spend money on SoundCloud with a saved payment method could've opened up all kinds of other businesses for SC to tap into such as ticket sales, merch, etc. I'm not a huge fan of speculating on what could of been with companies, especially when they're in trying times like SC is now, but I can't help but wonder how the last few years could've played out differently if SC had stayed focused on an artist + fan platform instead of moving into more traditional major label catalog streaming.

Snowdax 9y ago

Oh man, I hadn't thought of this before but yeah I'd funnel a few quid to the right guys. Like Koan Sound are late on releasing their first full album, I'd pay to even just get an inside sample of the unfinished product right now.

dkersten 9y ago

I completely agree with this. I already pay random people on patreon, let me do the same for musicians I like. While on that topic, I really hate that in Spotify the portion of my money that goes to artists is distributed between all song plays instead of just _my_ song plays. I want the artists that I like to get my money, not bieber or whoever.

beisner 9y ago

Something like a Patreon for music, with a model more customized to the SoundCloud community and use case. Direct crowdfunding for music, but also as a platform for discovery and consumption.

azinman2 9y ago

Kind of a YouTube model? Is this not currently possible on SoundCloud? (I don’t actually know...) The problem is how to pay for the commercial licenses for all the songs free users listen to, or that you listen to but don’t support, in addition to their overhead. YouTube eventually figured this out, but it took them a long time and they had the benefit of being part of Google (cash, talent, existing ad network & tech, huge audience, etc). SoundCloud at least has the benefit of hosting audio instead of video, so their bandwidth and storage costs are far lower.