The SoundCloud Stimulus Plan

As Billboard is reporting this morning, our portfolio company SoundCloud is putting up $15mm to support its creator community in this difficult time for musicians.

Musicians can’t tour right now. That’s a huge part of their earnings. Many are turning to live streaming and I hope that will turn into real money for them. But regardless, everything that supports musicians right now will help.

SoundCloud is investing an additional $10mm in its Repost Select artist services platform to get money into the hands of artists now. They are also making $5mm of Promote On SoundCloud inventory free to artists.

And SoundCloud has made it one-click simple for artists to connect to Kickstarter, Patreon, Bandcamp, and PayPal so their fands can provide direct support.

And last but not least, SoundCloud has relaunched its Repost by SoundCloud offering that makes it simple for its artist community to get plays (and get paid) across all of the major streaming services.

All of this will help the SoundCloud artist community make more money online while their in-person business is offline. And that is a really great thing.