It's long been a point of contention that SoundCloud doesn't offer royalties to artists who use the service. It's resulted in labels like Sony taking all its music down from the service, and more than likely, led other major labels to pursue the route of the often annoying, always dire, lyric videos on YouTube. But it doesn't take a genius to work out that Soundcloud is great. It's literally the only music service in the world where you can actually discover reems of new, undiscovered music. Today they've announced that it's about to become a whole lot better because: they're going to start paying royalties to over 20,000 independent labels who use the service. Fuck yeah! Gimme that money baby.In a deal announced on their website today, SoundCloud have brought Merlin's worldwide network - which includes labels like Epitaph, Warp, Beggars Group, Secretly, Domino, and Ninja Tune - on board. While it's not yet clear exactly how the deal is going to benefit musicians financially, SoundCloud state that it's "another way for us to further support the independent community by opening a new source of revenue for them". The Guardian also report that Merlin-affiliated labels will also be able to access new content-management tools on SoundCloud, including the ability to track how their music is being listened to (and uploaded) by fans on the service, which claims 175 million monthly listeners.Basically: anyone signed to a label, or who wants to get signed to a label, and fears that their music may be taken down from the most lucrative service - one which has given birth to careers stretching from Lorde to Kaytranada - can rest easy. Now the next step: payment for everyone who uses the service.
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