Warner Music Group signs on the dotted line with the music service with the most listeners.
SoundCloud has confirmed its first deal with a major music company.
The company, which brings 175 million listeners into its orange ecosystem per month, has tied the knot with Warner Music Group and its publishing company Warner/Chappell, bringing the pair to its (still invite-only) On SoundCloud monetization initiative. On SoundCloud, the company's first attempt to generate for creators (and itself), lets content partners decide what of their uploaded content to monetize, via five different advertisement flavors (native, audio, display, channel sponsorship and contests).
On the phone from New York, SoundCloud CEO Alex Ljung tells Billboard that, while the announcement came "a bit earlier than we expected" (after the Wall Street Journal published a detailed report about the deal, citing unnamed sources), the deal won't make SoundCloud into a Spotify-type on-demand streaming service. "It's a natural evolution," Ljung says.