Soundcloud has Signed a Licensing Deal With Sony Music

SoundCloud - Licensing Deal Signed with Sony Music

According to sources with information of the situation, licensing deal has been signed with Sony Music by SoundCloud, providing its deals with all three main labels, making way for the subscription service it had scheduled to launch later this year. It is said that Sony Music would be getting equity from SoundCloud in the deal.

As per the agreement SoundCloud will give access to Sony Music artists comprising of Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Future, Calvin Harris, Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Miguel and Justin Timberlake. The streaming music service intends to launch a paid subscription plan and a source close to the situation informed that the deals SoundCloud had struck with the majors does not permit it to build a full on-demand service akin to Spotify or Apple Music.

It is said that SoundCloud has already struck deals with Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group as well as Merlin, an independent network of labels; Sony Music had been the last holdout. But obtaining a deal with Sony Music had been challenging. According to Billboard, the label pulled its music of SoundCloud last year when the reports revealed that Sony Music had not been happy with the lack of monetization opportunities.

A Mid-Tier Service

Since the deal is done and SoundCloud has obtained the blessings of the music industry, it needs to figure out how to monetize the services without isolating the 175 million users who seemed to be using it without any cost.

 According to sources, it is said that the company seems to be serious regarding monetizing the service and one industry source has informed The Verge that they need to make this work if SoundCloud has a long term future. Initial discussions had SoundCloud’s paid offering at $10 a month when it launches later this year. There had also been talks of a mid-tier service which were priced less than that.

Together with the excess of songs which live only on SoundCloud already, SoundCloud tends to have an advantage over competing streaming services that largely offer the same music catalog. SoundCloud had refrained from commenting on rumours and Sony Music did not respond to request for comment.

Goal of Launching Subscription Tier

Sealing a related pact in January with No. 1 recording company Universal over its 2015 deal with Warner, Sony agreement seemed to the final obstacle between SoundCloud and its goal of launching a subscription tier. SoundCloud known as the YouTube for audio draws a great number of music listeners online though in the past it has annoyed the music due to its early reputation of being careless with regards to royalties.

SoundCloud had experienced some of the same industry tension which YouTube had encountered while it handled to manage unauthorised uploads of copyrighted material at a particular site where the users can upload their own sound files. This made it difficult for SoundCloud to repair deals together like Sony and Universal. But service’s growing popularity made it difficult for the music industry to tune out. SoundCloud presently has a limited advertising business and intends to introduce subscription services in the U.S. as well as other markets later in the year.

Qualcomm's Universal Media Streaming Comes To Soundcloud

The mobile chip constructor company Qualcomm has been quite steady with their footsteps in the competitive market of gadgets. The start of this New Year has been no different for the company Qualcomm; rather it is proving to be better considering their previous records. The Qualcomm’s universal media streaming for AllPlay devices has not been much of a success compared to their fellow technologies like DLNA, Apple’s Airplay etc., but a recent move made by the company might earn them good dividends.
Briefing

The Qualcomm’s universal media streaming is all set to extend their range of access across SoundCloud and Tidal devices that will let you use AllPlay as well. The company’s recent unveiling of such new set of plans seems promising and will definitely gain them enough momentum in the gadget market. Later this year, the Tidal and SoundCloud have both promised to extend their support to the company’s universal media streaming which will enable the users to hear to remixes, pristine-sounding songs and podcasts available at large range of networked stereos and speakers.

Special Mention

Meanwhile, there is good news for Korean and Chinese listeners, as they will be delighted to see that QQ music and KT music also kept on deck.

USP of the Qualcomm’s Universal media streaming 

The universal media streaming of the mobile chip maker company is expected to deliver a platform of simple and convenient streaming of media universally. And with its vision of having floating partners alongside them and extending their app program, will definitely fulfil the expectations. You will be able to stream in AllPlay, SoundCloud and Tidal devices through several music (audio and video) services which even include Spotify. You can have your albums blasting on every system in the house of yours, if you want. To be straight, both Monster’s SoundStage speakers and Fon’s Gramophone media hub will take your AllPlay, SoundCloud and Tidal tunes.

Its Competitions 

There are a lot of similar gears in the market that promises to match the required services. The first WiFi speaker of the House of Marley, the One Foundation (that can take your AllPlay tunes), Bayan Audio, Goodmans, OptomaNuforce, Inkel/Sherwood, SVS, TCL, TP-link and many more, that are vowing to match each other’s services throughout the year 2015.

However the list of partners that have extended their support can be trusted upon, as it is highly improbable that any of them will ditch by holding back their existing services or devices.

By the end of this year, one can definitely expect some more apps to work with the Qualcomm’s media streaming and in the near future as well, before the wave of such supporting software applications reach the wild. But one feels that it will not take much longer time before all of our music applications have an in built audio sharing ability. Although it is big enough that one should not have much problem in streaming their favourite music on devices they are happy using.