Sony Music gets music from Soundcloud

Sony Music has pulled the music of a handful of popular artists from Soundcloud after revenue negotiations broke down. Sony would have problems with, in its view, the lack of a revenue model at Soundcloud.

Sony has removed recordings from the Soundcloud pages of Adele, Hozier, Miguel, Kelly Clarkson, Passion Pit, Leon Bridges and MS MR, among others, Billboard writes. The site claims to have heard from an insider that Sony has removed it because there would not be enough ways on Soundcloud to earn from the music.

SoundCloud announced an ad-based revenue model, On SoundCloud, last year. A spokesperson for the Swedish streaming audio company tells Billboard that USD 2 million has now been paid out to 100 partners. Also just this week, SoundCloud reached an agreement with the National Music Publishers’ Association about the right to stream music from affiliated independent labels.

Sony’s move marks the music industry’s struggle with free streaming services. Spotify has also been under fire for some time because artists would earn too little with it. Recently, it was rumored that Apple would pressure music publishers to stop licensing free streaming services.