With all the bad press we’ve seen floating around recently about Soundcloud, I’m not really surprised how suspicious people have been about this bit of news: last week, the company fairly quietly announced that off the back of the launch of On Soundcloud, they’ve managed to hook in a major player to license on the platform. Warner Music Group, the umbrella corporation that houses a large number of successful record labels – has agreed to share it’s catalogue… for a price.
WMG looks after quite a few labels with some good history. A few choice names are: Atlantic Records (Yes, Led Zeppelin), Asylum (Tom Waits, The Eagles), A & E (Paul Oakenfold, Garbage), Machine Shop (Linkin Park), Zappa Records (Frank Zappa).
There’s been growing heat from users who are finding it increasingly frustrating to upload music to the site without running the risk of having audio files removed due to accusations of copyright violations. Recently, it seems Soundcloud has been far more aggressive with people using unlicensed music (read: other people’s) and it has hit DJs particularly hard. This has just added to the feeling that the company isn’t listening to the needs of its users… some who’ve been supporters of the service since the beginning.
A few weeks ago, Soundcloud proudly blogged about a redesign for the site and apps and had to close comments due to so much negativity from readers. The bold visuals featured the album art front and centre in a device-responsive format, but ignored the proportions of older cover art, which had to be 1:1 square, cutting off parts of the image.
Soundcloud is getting to the point where they need some good news to placate frustrated users. Could this be a turning point? This new licensing deal may just be a good thing for users of the service, if it means less DMCA take-downs when samples or label music are used in tracks or mixes. The caveat, though, is that Warner was given a stake in the company, but there doesn’t seem to be a mention of how much.
This leads to a question of how many times Soundcloud can slice up the pie for other record labels to follow suit before losing a controlling stake. Regardless of how you feel about big music labels and the mainstream industry, the majors taking a share of the company can’t be a good thing for label competition. While it’d be hard to claim that Soundcloud has anything near a monopoly, it’s certainly got the momentum to be synonymous with artist music access. But maybe it opens the door for an alternative to thrive? It’s not like we DJs don’t have plenty of options.
For now, we sit and wait and hope that Soundcloud figures out it needs to start listening to the people that make the site its money: the users; and how to stop burning through cash reserves before they run out. The funny thing is, not only was the site one of the early adopters of the freemium model on the web, it offered a decent package that artists appreciated and used. It *should* have been profitable. And we haven’t even mentioned the upcoming plans to stick ads into the site and audio.
What do you think of this news? Have you got any tips of where to stick your mixes or music?
https://hearthis.at/ is the new soundcloud.
Looks like a good deal, but what stops record labels coming after hearthis?
Nothing. Unless they find some sort of arrangement. The labels will keep playing this game of whack-a-mole, and users will continue to have no brand loyalty and just move to the next service. Unless Bittorrent got in on the act and did some sort of p2p music streaming service.
Bit late in the day and I can’t see much benefit, as the writer states very well it’s one label what about the rest? Equally it does not resolve the crap design and fact it does not even function correctly with constant issues, typical arrogance of a company that was supported well in its infancy only to forget those who helped build it good riddance in my opinion once the big boys are involved nobody will want to be there anyway as lots of other options around.
This never seemed like the point of soundcloud, y’know? I know they need to monetize, and copyright suits aren’t exactly cheap.
But I don’t need to find Warner Music stuff on soundcloud. I can find that pretty much anywhere, and in more convenient packages. I use soundcloud to curate new stuff, and unfortunately that’s not really convenient for any place that wants to make money.
From what I’ve figured out, this will also cover licensing for samples and having their tracks in a mix.
Oh I understand, but it doesn’t change my sentiment. We’ll go with the premise that I’m a unique case, since that could very likely be how it is.
I’m too removed from anything Warner Bros does anymore, let alone would do, so I’m not the best perspective on this, but I can’t remember the last mix I listened to featuring music from Warner Bros that isn’t at least 15 years old.
I’ve been on the fence about buying a soundcloud account for a few months… Still not sure and now I’m even less sure with talk of ads and ads in tracks!? wtf