SoundCloud is here to stay

It seems like it could have been viable, even if they had to implement a manual review / whitelisting process to make sure an artist has appropriate rights to sell a song while preventing people from selling bootlegs and unlicensed DJ mixes. Even taking a 10-15% cut, compared to Apple's 30%, would probably have generated significant revenue. The 'Buy' buttons on songs and playlists that can be linked to any URL have been a part of the product for as long as I can remember, and for the majority of artists those buttons have been the only way to earn money from being on SoundCloud (aside from less directly related things like parlaying SoundCloud popularity into touring revenue). Instead of SoundCloud collecting payments when this button is clicked by a user, they've instead sent all of this traffic off to iTunes, Bandcamp, and any number of other retail and streaming outlets artists choose to link to.

Quick ways to spend money on SoundCloud with a saved payment method could've opened up all kinds of other businesses for SC to tap into such as ticket sales, merch, etc.

I'm not a huge fan of speculating on what could of been with companies, especially when they're in trying times like SC is now, but I can't help but wonder how the last few years could've played out differently if SC had stayed focused on an artist + fan platform instead of moving into more traditional major label catalog streaming.

I think the subscription model is the most valid, but what happens e.g. with Spotify is that most of my subscription goes to a small artists I don't care about.

The right way to do it is: take my subscription, take a cut, split the rest to the artists that I listened to based on the amount of playing time I put on each of them.

Make me have a subscription for $7 a month, but that money goes directly to an artist I choose and then take a cut.

The problem is how to pay for the commercial licenses for all the songs free users listen to, or that you listen to but don’t support, in addition to their overhead. YouTube eventually figured this out, but it took them a long time and they had the benefit of being part of Google (cash, talent, existing ad network & tech, huge audience, etc). SoundCloud at least has the benefit of hosting audio instead of video, so their bandwidth and storage costs are far lower.

I personally use SoundCloud to find music and buy them on iTunes (links are usually included in the description and artists would definitely get a cut from Apple). I believe buying merchandise and attending concerts would be popular as well.

While on that topic, I really hate that in Spotify the portion of my money that goes to artists is distributed between all song plays instead of just _my_ song plays. I want the artists that I like to get my money, not bieber or whoever.

Like Koan Sound are late on releasing their first full album, I'd pay to even just get an inside sample of the unfinished product right now.

Direct crowdfunding for music, but also as a platform for discovery and consumption.