Stats revolve around Portishead’s cover of ABBA’s ‘SOS’.
Streaming platform SoundCloud has announced that artists have perceived an increase of up to 500% on their royalty payments. The news stem from their ‘fan-powered’ model, which was introduced back in March.
The ‘old model’ is based on all subscriptions paid pooled together, and then re-distributed according to an artist’s share of total streams on the platform. This means that part of the subscription fee is paid out to artists we don’t listen to. Soundcloud’s ‘user-centric’ model is meant to lead to fairer payouts for independent artists whose market share is small, but have a dedicated fan base.
And according to the platform, that seems to be the case, as they announced that UK band Portishead’s royalty payments have gone up 500% since the introduction of the ‘fan-powered’ model.
These statistics are built around Portishead’s cover of ABBA’s ‘SOS’, with Geoff Barrow of the band saying: ‘I didn’t expect huge amounts of people to listen to [SOS]. It was more about getting the idea out that you could stream music and it could make money…. It’s the difference between being able to order a pizza and someone actually paying the rent.’ All proceeds from said cover were redirected to charity.
You can learn more about SoundCloud’s ‘fan-powered’ royalty model here.
