As any producer may know, getting paid for making music can be a really difficult feat to accomplish. YouTube seemed to hit the nail on the head when it comes to online videos with their advertising program however, vloggers aren’t the only ones who can start making money through ads now. Today marks the launch of On Soundcloud, a new creator partner program that allows artist to get paid when their sounds are played. Ads will be a gradual release throughout the next couple of months and inside we’ll break down the three tiers of Soundcloud and how these new ads will work.
Premium Tier vs. Pro vs. Partner
Soundcloud is still going to be offering their former levels of service in addition to their new tier, Premier. What is important to note is that the ad revenue sharing is only available through the premier level. Even with a paid subscription, you won’t be able to profit off the ads that are displayed on your profile. Also, the Premier level of service is being distributed via invites directly from Soundcloud. In a similar fashion to YouTube’s Partner program, to monetize off tracks, Soundcloud is probably interested in seeing some vitality and potential in a producer’s profile before they make the effort to put ads on the account.
How Soundcloud Ads Work?
Advertising is one thing that can either be subtle and effective or just down right annoying. According to Soundcloud, this introduction of ads is here to make a better experience for both content creators and listeners. The ad revenue program is currently only available to US creators and can only be made of US listeners. Soundcloud is working on incorporating more countries and creators in the future.
Ads will start to be shown on the site from brand partners, which means, any ads you do see come straight from companies that Soundcloud endorses. The other places you might start to experience ads are on the tracks themselves. If a creator is a Premium subscriber, you may experience short audio ads on the tracks before they start playing. Again, similar to YouTube’s ads in the beginning of videos, these ads are meant to be short and quaszi-subtle. It is not clear if there will be a skip ad feature after a certain amount of the ad is played.
Cool note: the audio ads will only be served on content that Premium partners have given explicit consent to do so. You won’t hear ads on every track that is part of a premium profile.
More Ads, More Opportunities
Ads are a necessary evil that ensure content creators can still eat and produce amazing content. A majority of YouTube stars work towards decreasing the amount of ads they put onto their content. The new Soundcloud service gives content creator similar opportunities to monetize off their tracks through ads and, hopefully, the profit made through ads will give the producers more resources to make music.
It will be interesting to see how this service works from an actual Premium account user to see how this new service helps them as an artist. Soundcloud may not be the place to upload your mixes but it may become the YouTube of music makers.
What do you think of ads on Soundclouds? Neccesary evil or annoying feature?
