If Spotify is the distributor, SoundCloud is the entry gate. That’s how SoundCloud differentiates itself from its competition, according to CEO Kerry Trainor.
“We’re with artists from the very beginning of their journey,” he told Cheddar in an interview Wednesday.
Trainor pointed out that many of the artists who dominated the charts late last year started on SoundCloud up to six years ago.
“We’re with artists when they’re putting their first uploads into the world, generating their first fans...whereas most of the other services are really further on in artists’ journeys.”
On Wednesday, the music and podcast streaming platform launched its first-ever advertising campaign titled “First on SoundCloud,” spotlighting new, emerging artists.
The news came on the same day that rival streaming platform, Pandora, announced plans to buy AdsWizz -- an audio ad tech company -- to create “the largest digital audio advertising ecosystem.”
But the question of how to pay artists fairly for their music looms large for the entire streaming industry.
“We’re still in pretty early days,” said Trainor.
“The exciting thing about streaming is that we now have a clear model where a lot of revenue is returning to music. Not [too] many years ago, there was a question mark whether people would pay for access to music at all.”
Eventually, he said, the industry will find a way to fix the economics around this.
About 780,000 pressure washers sold at retailers like Home Depot are being recalled across the U.S. and Canada, due to a projectile hazard that has resulted in fractures and other injuries among some consumers.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
Ford is recalling more than 355,000 of its pickup trucks across the U.S. because of an instrument panel display failure that’s resulted in critical information, like warning lights and vehicle speed, not showing up on the dashboard.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. Sharpton called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation." He and other Black leaders have called for boycotting American retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity and reducing discrimination in their ranks.
President Donald Trump's administration last month awarded a $1.2 billion contract to build and operate what's expected to become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex to a tiny Virginia firm with no experience running correction facilities.
