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Warner Music Group Signs On To SoundCloud’s Artist-Friendly Payment Model

By  |  July 21, 2022

By: Amanda Silberling (TechCrunch)

When Soundcloud launched its artist-friendly fan-powered royalty system last year, the model was only available for independent artists subscribed to the streamer’s paid tiers. Now, Soundcloud has inked its first major label partnership with Warner Music Group, whose artists can now earn fan-powered royalties on the platform too.

Since the early 2000s, artists and record labels alike have struggled to figure out how musicians can make a living when it’s so easy to download .mp3s online. New models like music streaming on Spotify can feel like a stop-gap, though, since payouts from these services can be paltry if you’re not Lizzo or Olivia Rodrigo.

Spotify pays artists via a pro-rata model, which means that there is a large pot of money that gets divided up among all artists depending on how many streams they each get. But that means that the success of superstar musicians can inadvertently take away from the payouts of up-and-coming performers…

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