In 6 Months SoundCloud Has Approved Just 100 Premier Partners, Payments Total $1 Million
2015 is the year that SoundCloud needs to implement a monetization strategy – both for itself and for the creators that have made the platform so popular. Today the company released the first stats from its Partner platform which launched last August to address the problem.
This morning SoundCloud announced that they've signed up 100 Premier Partners and paid them $1 million in advertising revenue since launching 6 months ago.
SoundCloud has been under pressure from the major labels and other rights holders to monetize more of the content available on the platform. Negotiations have been rumored to be difficult, but ongoing; and in August, SoundCloud added advertising with the promise of sharing that revenue with approved Premier Partners.
Six month later, the list of Premier Partners receiving payments – though including some significant creators like Green Label Sound, Sizzlebird, Maker Studios, Epic Rap Battles and comedian Kim Dawson - totals just 100, all in the U.S.
175 Million Monthly Users = $166,000 Monthly Payments
Payments to these Premier Partners total $1 million since August, according to SoundCloud. That's an average of just $10,000 per partner. Meaning that SoundCloud has $166,000 a month in payments from a service that as of December 2014 attracts more than 175 million unique users a month listening to free content from creators who upload 12 hours of audio every minute.
SoundCloud, which was founded in 2008, has said that they will expand the Premier Partner program outside of the U.S. and to more creators; but have decline to say when.
Misleading. Most likely the top 20 of those partners took the lions share of those revenues. And when major labels start running their artists most of the money will be going to them. They already run radio, pandora, spotify and now soundcloud. Once again indies lose on the movements they made popular.
Inaccurate article as the ads are only getting served to Soundcloud’s U.S audience at the moment which is far less than the 175 million total monthly users being used in the calculation here.