SoundCloud To Start Paid Subscription Service… But Don’t Freak Out Yet

SoundCloud also plans to dish out more streaming revenue to it's artists and producers. They would pay labels 18 cents a month for each individual with a “Full Catalog” account and 80 cents per month for each individual signed up with an “Additional Services” membership. Plus, each label or independent publisher would have a “Most Favored Nation” clause which would allow them to match the highest rate SoundCloud has for their competitors.

I'll try to break this down for the general population who don't quite understand business.

YOU'RE GOING TO PAY FOR MUSIC ONE WAY OR THE OTHER!

If you don't feel like paying a monthly fee through Spotify, SoundCloud, Tidal, Pandora, or any of the other services, you're going to have to listen to ads. It's that simple.

You can try and jack the mp3's if you want, but that's going to lead to less streaming revenue for your favorite artists, which leads to their label saying they don't have enough money to support some of the people on the label, which leads to cuts, which means that awesome album you just heard from a new artist may be the last one.

Musicians love making music for listeners, all they ask is that people appreciate it enough to help support them in some shape or form. 

If you truly (truly) don't have money for any subscription service, then listening on the free version is fine, but I don't want to see people freaking out just because musicians are asking that you respect their craft.

More money coming into SoundCloud means that the royalties will be higher for us per play.

Start building your following now so when they do go full scale in monetization you're already ahead of the curve.

1. At least half of your music should be on SoundCloud. This may be a little different for producers, but artists should definitely start putting most of their tracks up.

2. Select a good portion of your songs to have a follow-to-download tool. This way if you give out free music, you'll get a follower in return, and they'll keep listening to music. As long as they're listening, you'll be getting paid.

3. Set up a Supportify account for a follow-to-download tool by clicking the button below!

4. Start collaborating with artists that have the same amount of followers as you. You can put each others user names in your follow to download tool so that your audience can grow faster than you doing it alone!

5. Update your account regularly. When you don't have new stuff to post, you should be re-posting songs from your collaborators.

Don't be naive. Technology is advancing and musicians are going to start getting more of what they deserve. There is no need to flip out just because you've been spoiled the last decade and convinced that's it's ok for only certain careers to not get paid.

You will still be able to listen to music for free, just get used to more ads in the future.