Soundcloud wird Werbung einführen

Soundcloud wird Werbung einführen und damit dem selbstgesteckten Ziel, das YouTube für Sound zu werden, ein weiteres Stück näher kommen.
Die New York Times berichtet als erste.

On Thursday, as part of a new licensing deal with entertainment companies, SoundCloud will begin incorporating advertising and for the first time let artists and record labels collect royalties. Eventually, it plans to introduce a paid subscription that will let listeners skip those ads, as they can with Spotify and other licensed services.

– via www.nytimes.com

Wenig überraschend ist der Schritt hin zur Werbung auch eine Folge des Drucks aus der Tonträgerindustrie, die sich von Soundcloud eine zusätzliche Einnahmequelle erhofft.

In many ways the move is a reaction to industry pressure to license content and produce revenue. It also reflects SoundCloud’s complex relationship with record labels, which use the service to promote new releases and even hunt for new talent but have been irritated by their inability to make money from SoundCloud’s millions of listeners.

Die Werbung wird im Rahmen von Soundcloud Premier, dem neuen Lizenz-Programm, laufen:

For its new program, Premier, SoundCloud will sign licensing agreements with music companies that will allow it to run advertising on its service. Most of the revenue from those ads will go to the content provider, said Jeff Toig, SoundCloud’s chief business officer, although he declined to be more specific.

Das alles ist tatsächlich eine relativ genaue Nachbildung des Werbemodells von YouTube, das Rechteinhaber an Werbeeinnahmen von Videos beteiligt, die Nutzer hochgeladen haben, aber Inhalte der Rechteinhaber beinhalten.

Update:

Ein Productmanager von Soundcloud erklärt Details zum neuen Premier-Programm auf Hacker News:

One thing that might not be totally clear in our messaging about this right now is that ads will only play against tracks premier members have chosen to monetise. If you aren’t monetising your tracks, your listeners won’t be affected.

[..]

A premier track is a track uploaded and owned by a SoundCloud member who is part of the premier program. It can be monetised (ads can play in front of it) or not. The premier tier is currently invite-only but we want to open it up to more artists as fast as we can.
If a user (currently US only) is listening to their stream and they start playing a track a premier member has decided to monetise an ad will play in front of it. There are some other factors that will influence ad frequency obviously, but that is the general behaviour.

(Hervorhebungen von mir)