With its new partnerships, SoundCloud wants to make it easier for indie artists and producers to make it big.
SoundCloud remains an independent streaming music powerhouse.
Through the music service, Chance the Rapper, Avicii, Lil Uzi Vert, Post Malone, XXXTentacion, and Lil Yachty (along with many others) have achieved mainstream success.
To help a new generation of indie artists find success, the company has recently unveiled a new program.
SoundCloud has invited creators with over 5,000 plays in the past month to monetize their content. The feature is available for users in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
Now, the company wants to make it easier for producers and artists to create and upload new works on-the fly.
Creating new music in real-time.
The Berlin-based streaming platform has announced a new partnership with a slew of DJ performance applications. These include Native Instruments, Serato, Virtual DJ, DEX3, Mixvibes, and DJHercules.
The partnership allows DJs to stream and mix SoundCloud’s nearly 200 million song catalog in real time. Integrations will roll out in each application over the next few months.
To create a set, all users need is a paid Go+ account.
Kerry Trainor, SoundCloud’s CEO, first made the announcement at the Amsterdam Dance Event.
In a separate statement, he explained,
“Until recently, digital workflows for DJs were limited to downloads and physical media, but streaming workflows are the future.”
Speaking about how the partnership underscores the company’s long-term commitment to creators, Trainor added,
“Through these partnerships, DJs will have the largest, most diverse streaming music catalog ever assembled instantly accessible within the tools they use every day.”
The move coincides with another recent addition. SoundCloud has unveiled lossless streaming high-quality audio on its paid Go+ service.
Speaking about how the lossless feature combines with the new partnership, Trainor told Variety,
“What we are offering is an important first step [towards a lossless streaming future for high-quality audio files] and high-quality streaming access. It’s a whole different level of convenience [for creators/DJs] as we look to the future, and this a first-of-its-kind offering.”
Explaining why he chose to reveal the new partnership at the Amsterdam Dance Festival, Trainor said,
“The DJ and electronic community is extremely important to SoundCloud, and that’s why we chose to announce this news here at Amsterdam Dance Event. This community, particularly out of Europe, [was] the first to really embrace our platform.”
Unfortunately, while producers and artists can upload lossless formats onto the service, SoundCloud doesn’t yet support them. The company added that users can still “stream in high quality at 256kbps AAC.”
Featured image by SoundCloud.
So how do track creators get paid then?