Is Soundcloud Moving in on YouTube’s Territory?
Never thought of it that way until I read this on Music Industry Blog:
Soundcloud took another step away from being an ‘under licensed’ service to a ‘fully licensed’ one with its deal today with indie licensing body Merlin. This follows on the footsteps of deals with Warner and the National Music Publishers Association. Soundcloud is a long way yet from being out of the licensing woods but momentum is clearly building. Most importantly though, Soundcloud is inadvertently playing the role of ice breaker in the new wave of deals for sites that traded as promotional sites in the download era and are having to, willingly or not, accept a new role that looks and feels a lot more like a straight forward streaming service.
Merlin’s CEO Charles Caldas nailed it in this quote from an interview with Music Ally:
“As the value of the streaming market grows, people are starting to realise that consumption is the new sales. Anywhere that people are listening to music is actually the end-game now. This notion that everything is promotional: that way that people used to talk about YouTube as a ‘promotional channel’. When that becomes the destination for music fans, it needs to compete in the marketplace with all the platforms that are monetised,” said Caldas.
Read the entire article here.
