Soundcloud looking to start paying musicians

27 June 2014, 15:11 | Written by Luke Morgan Britton

(News)

Music-streaming platform Soundcloud are considering ways in which they can monetise their company and potentially repay users for content.

The Berlin-based website and app currently boasts 250 million listeners a month, making it the second biggest streaming service in the world behind Youtube.

Speaking to The Guardian recently, the company’s co-founder Eric Wahlforss said: “We’re experimenting with different monetization approaches. We’re throwing a couple of things out there and testing the waters a bit”, continuing: “When you have millions of followers and millions of listeners, you’ve got some point expecting there to be some sort of monetisation there. We hear that loud and clear.”

Wahlforss - who releases music himself under the name Forss - reiterated that there could be a royalty-type system in place in the next stage of the site.

“Some artists really get this idea of a real-time expression platform where anyone can participate and super-quickly get to listen to the latest stuff. That’s what we want to get to, and we think the artists and labels that embrace that paradigm are the ones who’ll win on our platform.”