Soundcloud elevates Artist toolkit, promises a direct line to superfans
Soundcloud has retooled its Repost artist offering with some significant upgrades. Tracy Chan, who helped create Spotify For Artists and ran music at Twitch, is leading the ongoing effort, which includes a rebranding to ‘Soundcloud For Artists.”
SoundCloud for Artists will serve as a centralized hub for distribution, promotional tools, monetization, and analytics, all accessed via a new dashboard with more features to be added in the coming months.
“This really helps us make SoundCloud kind of a companion to other music streaming services, to creator economy services, and to live streaming platforms,” said Chan.
Direct Line To Superfans
One promised feature that should excite Souncldoud’s community of 40 million creators is allowing them to see who their biggest fans are and communicate directly with them to nurture and monetize the relationship.
“We can actually go back to that concept of you don’t need scale. You need to focus on your 1,000 [or] 100 true fans,” said Chan.
Soundcloud For Artists Is Not Free
Unlike Spotify, Apple Music. or Amazon Music’s “For Artist” offerings. most will need to pay to use SoundCloud For Artists.
While there is a very limited free tier, artists will need to pay between $2.50 and $12.50 per month to access most features, including:
- Get paid for your music across streaming services
- Distribute your music to Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, and more
- Promote and pitch your music to Sirius XM and more
- Split payments with collaborators
THE HYPEBOT TAKEAWAY
While on the surface, it may seem unreasonable that Soundcloud charges for things that other DSPs offer for free, it does offer some unique services.
And when Soundcloud enables direct communications with superfans, it could be a game changer that will easily make a monthly subscription worthwhile.
Jump in now, or at least watch carefully what comes next. Tracy Chan is on track to create something awesome for artists yet again.
Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and a professor for the Berklee College Of Music.
