SoundCloud is finally introducing ads!
Today received a newsletter which honestly I expected much sooner. Given the fact there are many free plan users out there, hobby artists and so on, who have just an occasional need to post new sounds, recordings and music over at SoundCloud, it was just a matter of time before advertising was going to be introduced.
With abnormal exponential growth SoundCloud saw in the past few years since they launched in 2007, soon they overcome other popular services such as MySpace, SoundClick, ReverbNation, BandCamp and so on. Today they are defacto number one social sharing network for musicians and artists who have a need to share any audio material across the web.
Here’s the newsletter important bits:
Big news to share: I am proud to announce the launch of On SoundCloud, our new creator partner program. On SoundCloud lays the foundation for creators to make money from their content on the platform.
As artists ourselves, Eric and I started SoundCloud with a simple vision. We wanted to develop tools for creators, help them reach fans all over the world, and shape a way we could pay the creators who fuel the growth of SoundCloud.
You’ll recognize the first two levels of the program, Partner and Pro, as our current free and pro plans, but renamed and with a 50% increase in upload space. The all-new, invite-only Premier Partner level opens up many new opportunities for creators, including the ability to make money.
We’ve launched the Premier Tier with a small group of creators. Over time we’ll roll this out across the community to more creators like you.
To make revenue sharing possible, we’re introducing advertising from select brand partners to SoundCloud. When someone sees or hears an ad, they’re supporting an artist. We will include ads gradually, only on Premier Partners’ content, and bring on more advertisers as we grow On SoundCloud.
Everybody at SoundCloud is really excited about launching this creator program. We often hear people say, ‘I’m on SoundCloud’. Now we’re happy to be able to offer even more for the millions of creators who have made it the best place in the world to share and discover music & audio.
Alex Ljung
Founder and CEO of SoundCloud
This, of course, does not mean a bad thing. Ads are everywhere these days and they are making things going. However, I honestly doubt any artist with less then 100k plays per month will see any real profit from this. Additionally, as time goes by, new ads will come, which will turn SoundCloud into SoundClick (with questionable quality ads).
On a plus side, 2 hours limit is now raised to 3 hours for free users.
Recently, SoundCloud forced users to switch from classic mode, which was much better IMHO, with some unique features like deleting items you checked or not interested from the timeline stream, more detailed statistics about visitors in free plans and overall cleaner layout. New layout is flashy with bells & whistles outside, but on the inside it offers much less, actually. However, complete truth to be told, there are few things which are better in the new layout.
UPDATE: Seems that SoundCloud Staff are finally started listening to some Vox Populi tunes after all, Statistics charts are now much improved (although, still no Country info on free acounts, that’s not gonna happen anytime soon), and some things were straightened, too.
I hope that founders of SoundCloud are lot smarter, and that Partner Programs, as they now call it, will be beneficial for both visitors and users of the network.