SoundCloud Getting Closer to Licensing Deal With Universal Music

As we’ve heard for the last couple months, it’s rumored SoundCloud is, once again, close to a deal with Universal Music Group. According to Music Business Worldwide, UMG is looking for a significant stake in SoundCloud equity, as they similarly have in Spotify and as it’s also been rumored before, are looking to make a paid tier of the platform similar to every other large scale streaming service out there. As anticipated, we are getting closer and closer to significant changes in the platform. BMI included an anonymous quote about the stance of UMG on the potential deal.

“Universal had a couple of aggressive choices: they could either sue SoundCloud, which wasn’t off the table, or refuse to play ball with them and watch them slide out of existence as money ran low. But Universal knows that a world with a SoundCloud that it can control is better than a world without SoundCloud full stop—especially if that leads to a hundred clones popping up online.”