Brought to you by SoundCloud: Fan-Powered Royalties

This just in—SoundCloud has announced some intriguing news. Introducing: fan-powered royalties.

Last week, SoundCloud introduced to us their most revolutionized idea yet. Fan-powered royalties are designed for independent artists to finally earn what they deserve.  As stated on their website, streaming services today pay artists from a pool of money from fans. Artists get paid from that pool based on their share of total streams. This is a model that mostly benefits big stars. For example, a bigger artist who happens to have 2 million followers earns more than a rising star who has a little over 100,000 followers, however, the gap between how much the bigger artist makes is almost about 6 times more than what a rising artist earns. This makes it almost impossible for a rising artist to earn money. This model also makes it take a long time until a rising artist can make music a full-time career. With fan-powered royalties, SoundCloud is enabling independent artists to earn money based on their dedicated fans’ actual listening habits. This means that the more listens an artist has on SoundCloud, the more they get paid.

Fan-powered royalties is a model that will spark a movement for independent artists. SoundCloud is the first company to introduce an idea like this and is a model that individualizes an artists’ earnings, with the help of their own fans. SoundCloud anticipates that a rising artist can earn 4 times more than what they are starting out with now. In addition, SoundCloud claims that this will be a “more fair and transparent way to earn money on SoundCloud.”

Many people on social media have been buzzing about it. Here are a few comments from a post on LinkedIn:

Here’s a tweet from an independent artist:

So what can you do to help rising artists become more noticed? It’s up to you, the fan, to support your favorite artists by continuing to listen to their content. Fan-powered royalties will directly help the success of uprising artists. SoundCloud wants to promote deeper connections between artists and their direct fans by being paid by those who directly stream their music.

Fan-powered royalties will commence on April 1st, 2021. Independent artists are more than stoked to see how this model will rollout into. Fan-powered royalties can be the beginning of a change in the music industry.

Want more information? Check out SoundCloud’s FAQ.

Sources: SoundCloud