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Business News Deals Digital Labels & Publishers
Sony Music signs SoundCloud licensing deal
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 18 March 2016
Sony Music has seemingly got around, finally, to signing a licensing deal with SoundCloud, meaning it now has all three majors on board. Maybe now it can get on with launching that subscription service it keeps banging on about. All the fucking time.
According to The Verge, Sony’s gone for the old classic ‘licensing and a bit of equity’ deal. How much SoundCloud had to give up hasn’t been disclosed, but it’s likely the label drove a hard bargain. With Warner Music and the indie label-repping Merlin already on board, Universal signed up to all things SoundCloud in January, having been awaiting the outcome of the ultimately settled legal action by PRS.
The Sony deal has been hard fought though, with the label going so far as to start pulling down its content from the website when negotiations weren’t going as it would like last year. It was rumoured that, despite SoundCloud having ad-funded and subscription tiers in the works, Sony felt that neither had the potential to provide much revenue.
Whether or not those concerns have been completely put to rest remains to be seen. But in this make or break year for SoundCloud, this deal is vital.
