This week, SoundCloud rolled out SoundCloud Premier, a monetization feature. The feature will be available for all independent artists who subscribe to SoundCloud Pro or Pro Unlimited – as long as your content has received at least 5000 plays in eligible countries in the past month.
Premier promises fast payouts and a larger revenue share than other streaming services, alongside all of the pre-existing benefits of their platform. As of now, there don’t seem to be any specific share percentages in any of the descriptions, so artists will have to put their trust in SoundCloud’s claims. Artists are also guaranteed to retain all of the rights to their music, including the ability to post and monetize their content elsewhere.
One stipulation that might prevent dance music artists from monetizing immediately has to do with the copyright policy. At the time of enrollment in the monetization program, artists need to have zero copyright “strikes.” This means that artists who have run into copyright issues with remixes will have to wait a while before they can enroll – for those with recent strikes, artists could have to wait up to a year.
Additionally, it seems strikes incurred after enrolling in monetization will make accounts ineligible. As a result, we could see fewer remixes from some of our favorite indie artists in the future, if they’re depending on SoundCloud Premier for income.
Between SoundCloud Premier and Spotify’s new upload feature, opportunities for indie artists to break through on streaming platforms appear to be getting increasingly better, but the verdict is still out. Only time will tell how successful either of these services are.
You can find out more about SoundCloud Premier in the release video below, or here.
Who’s your favorite SoundCloud indie artist? Let us know in the comments!
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