March 3, 2021
By Alexandre Trochut
It's a revolution into the streaming platforms landscape, Soundcloud has decided to release a new feature allowing equitable payouts. Basically, the more fans listen to artists on SoundCloud, the more they get paid. Artists are paid on their dedicated fans’ actual listening habits.
Today we're introducing fan-powered royalties — a fairer and more transparent way for artists to earn money on SoundCloud. Under this game-changing model, we are leveling the playing field for independent artists and allowing fans' dedicated listenership to directly support the artists they love.
With fan-powered royalties, money made from listeners goes directly to the artists they listen to. This equitable payout model is what independent artists across the industry have been asking for, and as an artist-first platform, we're excited to be the first music company to roll it out.
Soundcloud
Fan-powered royaltie = Real equitable payouts ?
The announcement included a video explaining how Fan-powered royalties distribution system works. Here is below a screenshot of the animation :
Soundcloud stated that payouts are based on a fan’s overall listening time, and that the fans the artists are seeing in their insights dashboard are the fans who are contributing to their royalties. SoundCloud currently hosts over 250 million tracks from 30 million creators in 190 countries.
We are excited to be the ones to bring this to market to better support independent artists. Soundcloud is uniquely positioned to offer this transformative new model due to the powerful connection between artists and fans that takes place on our platform. Many in the industry have wanted this for years.
As the only direct-to-consumer music streaming platform and next generation artist services company, the launch of fan-powered royalties represents a significant move in SoundCloud’s strategic direction to elevate, grow and create new opportunities directly with independent artists.
Michael Weissman, Soundcloud CEO
The company has created a dedicated page to encourage artists to publish more music on the service. Independent artists who monetize directly with SoundCloud will benefit from fan-powered royalties beginning April 1, 2021.
Dedicated payment cycles
Premier artists will receive their first statement in May 2021, as Premier runs on a 45-day payment cycle while Repost artists will receive their first statement in June 2021, as Repost runs on a 60-day payment cycle. Another Q&A page has been realized for artists to answer all their questions.
