Berlin-based SoundCloud has faced its share of challenges lately, but it seems like things may be starting to look up for the company. They’ve made a licensing deal with Universal Music that will allow for SoundCloud to host Universal artists and for the label group to collect royalties from streams of their music on the site.
“At UMG, we have long-embraced empowering entrepreneurs and innovative services such as SoundCloud,” said Universal Music Group chairman and CEO Lucian Grainge in a statement. He added: “We look forward to working with SoundCloud and supporting the company’s evolution into a successful commercial service.”
Over a year ago, SoundCloud came to a similar agreement with Warner Music Group, so in terms of the major labels, now that only leaves Sony to sign on. Whether the latter will eventually agree to climb aboard the SoundCloud train or not, there’s no denying that things are looking a lot rosier for the streaming service right now.
But it’s not all about the big guys, either. SoundCloud has made their peace with the indies as well, or at least some of them. They’ve made a deal with the digital rights agency Merlin, which represents a number of indie imprints. They even found a way to work things out with PRS For Music, the U.K. music licensing company that brought a lawsuit against them last year. (As is so often the way of these things, the two parties ultimately decided upon a settlement). So maybe it’s good to be SoundCloud after all…