This past weekend, Pando Daily came out with a very informative, well-written article discussing the recent downfall of popular music service Soundcloud and an analysis of exactly where they went wrong. If you’ve kept up with the headlines for last couple of months, you’ll know that Soundcloud has recently beefed up its efforts to crack down on its loyal users’ copyright infringements and use of remix/bootleg material that doesn’t belong to them. Using ZEFR, Youtube’s first line of defense against copyright, Soundcloud has already begun to alienate the smalltime artists that made them the service they are today. By removing tracks that contain “stolen” content and putting the power in the hands of the original creators to run ads over them, the site revealed the motive to abandon their founding principles.
Despite this approach, Soundcloud still had a chance to survive as a company by pandering to the bigger labels. Because their operating losses doubled between 2012 and 2013, the service decided to “legitimatize their business” and reach out to organizations like Sony. With a roster like theirs at Soundcloud’s disposal, they would surely gain back some of the following that ditched them for sites like Bandcamp. This idea has backfired, however, as it has now been made clear by Sony that the service simply does not offer as competitive a monetization as other organizations like Pandora or Spotify.
Now, it seems as though Soundcloud is trapped in limbo. The smaller, independent artists are no longer allowed free reign to create and share music the way they want to, and the bigger labels, who were Soundcloud’s last shot at stability, are now turning their backs on them because they haven’t monetized themselves enough! Soundcloud needed these labels to stick by them, but because they were slow to the game of selling out to major companies it appears that it is now too late for them to start.
This week was the kicker, as Sony finally began removing the EDM artists from Soundcloud’s clutches. Madeon even took to Twitter to voice his opinion on the matter.
Article by Peter Rubinstein
Source: Your Edm
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