Update, 5/21/2015, 5:00 PM: Earlier this week, electronic-pop singer Madeon said that Sony planned to pull his music from Soundcloud. He announced the imminent removal via Twitter, thanking Soundcloud "for being such a great music discovery platform" and lamenting "Sony Corporate's disconnected-from-reality strategy." His Soundcloud Page has now disappeared.
Sony will take down all of my music from my SoundCloud account in the next few days, let's have a farewell listen : https://t.co/SHZd49hnwj
— Madeon (@madeon) May 19, 2015Thank you SoundCloud for being such a great discovery platform over the past five years. Well done Sony for holding your own artists hostage
— Madeon (@madeon) May 19, 2015(Lots of love for my label Columbia of course, they're great. Less love for Sony Corporate's disconnected-from-reality strategy.)
— Madeon (@madeon) May 19, 2015Anyway sorry to bore you with corporate nonsense but wanted to have a little Madeon's Soundcloud account commemoration !
— Madeon (@madeon) May 19, 2015
In a recent Q&A at Harvard University, Chance the Rapper declared his love for SoundCloud in simple, easy-to-understand terms: "It's ill as fuck." But apparently not everyone shares his views. According to Billboard, Sony Music has pulled a number of its artists' songs from SoundCloud because of what one source calls "a lack of monetization opportunities." Several of the artists that Sony removed from Soundcloud—including Adele and Hozier—aren't known for using the platform. However, the label also pulled music by Miguel, who had released a surprise three-song EP via Souncloud last December.
SoundCloud, which first became immensely popular as a free, easy way for sharing music online, has been attempting to move towards the model
of other streaming services—or as Ryan Hemsworth once described it, "taking that turn towards yuckiness"—for nearly a year now. The company
reached an agreement with Warner Music Group in 2014 and suggested that it will debut a paid tier, similar to the ones available on Spotify and
Rdio, sometime this year.
Check out the label Soulection's thoughts on the new Soundcloud and read up on what musicians told FADER about changes to the platform back in November.
Lead Image: Jason Merritt / Getty Images
