SoundCloud signed its first licensing deal with a major label – WMG – last week, but with negotiations still ongoing or temporarily shelved depending on who you talk to, the company is making its views known that such deals aren’t crucial to its future. “SoundCloud is not dependent on a full catalogue as much as other players in this space are,” co-founder Eric Wahlforss told the Financial Times yesterday. “We have a lot of creators on the platform and only a tiny fraction of those are signed to major labels. We have a much broader content base. It’s really the depth of the content that differentiates the platform.” Sceptics might point out that the risk of not signing deals with UMG and Sony is less about not getting their content, and more about not attracting expensive and potentially-ruinous lawsuits. Not forgetting that inking those deals would increase SoundCloud’s saleability: the FT suggests that “up to 10 companies” have approached SoundCloud about a potential acquisition in the last year.
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