SoundCloud Announces Royalty Deal With Over 20,000 Indie Labels
5 June 2015
Music sharing giant SoundCloud has just struck a deal with global not-for-profit music rights agency, Merlin, allowing over 20,000 independent labels to stream their music legally on the service and collect royalties.
The Merlin Network is now partners with On SoundCloud – a wing of SoundCloud launched last year that introduced advertising as a way of paying royalties to labels. In a statement released on June 4, Soundcloud affirmed: "The indie community has always been at the heart of SoundCloud, and our deal with Merlin is another way for us to further support the independent community by opening a new source of revenue for them.”
Some of the record labels under the contract include Warp, Ninja Tune, Domino, Kontor Records, Epitaph, Beggars group and many more who will benefit from royalties every time their music is streamed directly from the platform.
You can read the entire statement by SoundCloud here and read more about the Merlin Network on Wikipedia.