Amid mounting criticism of SoundCloud and its attempts to swing into monetisation and licensing, the deal struck last week with Merlin, representing a multitude of independent labels, was hugely significant. Here was a significant part of the market (along with WMG and the NMPA) backing the service and, hopefully, giving it the space it needs to grow and to come good on all its promises. Now Merlin CEO Charles Caldas has been talking to Billboard about the deal. He praises SoundCloud for building and maintaining a niche but very loyal audience, describing it as “a whole new segment of the market to monetize”. He reveals that the payment structure in the deal is that of “immediate per usage monetization” and the multi-layered deal “definitely puts the royalty bearing part of it in line with similar players in the market place”. He also talks about Merlin’s recent deal with KKBOX in South Korea that opens up huge parts of Asia to the indies. And it wouldn’t be an interview with Caldas without some buckshot fired at the majors. “One of the key challenges we see is the imbalance of power and incentives, between the two largest majors in particular, and the rest of the market,” he says. “There is the potential with an effective duopoly for services to be forced into constructing their offerings to suit the needs of those two companies, as opposed to the consumer.” He ends on a bullish note, saying that they are “a tiny bit under” target for his predictions last year that Merlin’s revenues would exceed $160m within 12 months.
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Tools :: We Are Giant
With “fan communities” being on every artist’s team’s mind, we’re fans of the fact that…