April 3, 2025
🍦R.O.A.D. Podcast – Flavor Of The Month (April 2025)
Flavor of the Month is your cheat code for new DJ edits, remixes and bootlegs handpicked by the ROAD Podcast. Every month, the crew shouts out their favori...
Thursday, August 21, 2014
SoundCloud Introduces Advertising for the First Time
It’s been a big week in the world of digital music. On Tuesday, DJ Skee announced the launch of DASH Radio and Mixcloud unveiled subscription plans, and today, SoundCloud debuted a three-tiered program which introduces advertising to the platform for the first time.
Recognizing that not every artist has the same needs, On SoundCloud comes in three different flavors: Partner, Pro Partner and Premium Partner.
The free Partner tier is for beginners that don’t need a lot of upload time or advanced analytics while the Pro Partner tier is a paid plan for those that need more upload time, advanced tools and other nifty features.
Last but not least, SoundCloud is inviting select partners to participate in the Premium tier which gives creators the opportunity to make money through advertising. It also includes Pro features and more benefits.
SoundCloud’s Chief Business Officer Jeff Toig told Billboard:
“This is where we start to figure out how to generate revenue and help our creators make money in order to enable them to build careers with us . . . When Alex [Ljung, SoundCloud’s CEO] and Eric [Wahlforss, SoundCloud’s CTO] founded the company, they really saw an opportunity to build a business with a global, open platform that would kind of evolve over time.”
It should be noted that today’s announcement is not the result of SoundCloud’s on-going talks with the major labels. Toig told Billboard that the company is in “active and ongoing, advanced discussions” with Sony, Universal and Warner Music, but that this week’s launch was meant to illustrate how SoundCloud can be for anyone.
He continued, “SoundCloud is not just a service that depends on the majors only — although we do work with them and hundreds of their artists all the time, and we’d obviously love to have them onboard . . . But there is a much broader creative ecosystem here and we’re really keen to represent that in a full and complete way.”
Toig also said a paid subscription service is expected to be launched in the coming months, although details about the plan were not mentioned.
Related: SoundCloud Removes 70% of Kaskade’s Content
