Paul Resnikoff of Digital Music News has uploaded a copy of the agreement SoundCloud is allegedly negotiating with the National Music Publishers Association. The two-year deal offers advances of about $350,000 to the participating publishers. That figure is a recoupable advance, which means SoundCloud would make different royalty payments after reaching that amount. In exchange, SoundCloud would get a license allowing its creator partners to monetize and promote their uploads. Those creator partners are technically defined as “preferred content-owner business partners,” but in plain English it’s the users participating in the On SoundCloud monetization program.
The contract details how SoundCloud will calculate its publisher payments based on the musical content that it makes available on the platform. The equations vary between the freemium tier and subscription tiers. We got another look at how streaming services can crunch the payment numbers when Spotify’s contract with Sony was leaked.