Six months after SoundCloud commercialised its music with its On SoundCloud partner program, the company has released some figures about it monetisation efforts.
The topline stats are that the company has signed up over 100 Premier Partners since August, and paid over $1 million (€890k) in advertising revenue to partners including labels, audio partners and emerging artists.
That ad payment works out to around US $166k (€148k) per month; a figure that should rise as On SoundCloud is rolled out in territories outside the US “later this year”.
SoundCloud’s Premier Partner level gives artists the opportunity to make money from the tracks that they share on on the platform.
Warner Music Group became the first major label to license On SoundCloud in November, and was rumoured to take a single-digit percentage equity int he platform as a result
Whats clear is that, even if SoundCloud was keeping a 50%-plus chunk of advertising revenues, it wouldn’t be enough to turn its business model around: in FY 2013, the latest year on record, SoundCloud’s overall revenues hit $12.7m (€11.3m) with net losses of $25.9m (€23.1m).
The company said in a new blogpost: “On SoundCloud has led to the creation of native advertising opportunities with emerging artists and brands. With an exclusive track sponsored by Jaguar, London-based downtempo producer Sizzlebird got 1.3 million plays and doubled his followers in three weeks.
“In December, Green Label Sound launched the Open Call competition on the platform and in February Kelechi was announced as the grand prize winner. Also in December, Microsoft teamed up with Jacques Greene to release an exclusive remix of “No Excuse” (one of his most well-known tracks), by Swedish producer Yung Gud — it got nearly 800,000 plays in just 18 days.
“We’ve also seen independent artists like Romiti, Blackbear and Xavier Wulf rise to the top of the Premier Partner pack in terms of people listening to their tracks. Labels are benefiting from On SoundCloud, too, by using it to discover new artists and audiences.
“On the audio side, On SoundCloud has opened up many new avenues. For multi-channel networks like Fullscreen, Collective Digital Studio and Maker Studios (the labels of the audio world), SoundCloud offers an entirely new monetization channel for top and emerging talent. For example: using On SoundCloud, comedian Shane Dawson has seen his SoundCloud podcast Shane and Friends become a significant source of revenue. Epic Rap Battles of History is also now using SoundCloud to monetize content.
“What’s coming up? We got started with On SoundCloud in the US, but we’re aiming to begin bringing it to new territories later this year — stay tuned. We’ll also continue to add more Premier Partners as we go. We’re looking forward to the next steps of the On SoundCloud journey — and to having you along for the ride.”Music Business Worldwide
