SoundCloud and Universal Music Group Announce Partnership

13 January 2016 - Press release

The World’s Leading Music Company Forms Agreement with SoundCloud Across Recorded Music and Music Publishing

Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s leading music company, and SoundCloud, the world’s largest community of music and audio creators with 175 million monthly listeners, today announced they have reached an agreement that creates a host of new creative, commercial and promotional opportunities for UMG’s artists.

The agreement allows SoundCloud to benefit from UMG’s roster of emerging and established recording artists, as well as songwriters signed to Universal Music Publishing Group, as they roll out advertising and introduce subscription services in the US and other markets later this year. In addition, UMG’s labels and publishing company will gain access to SoundCloud’s promotional tools, analysis and data to provide recording artists and songwriters with new opportunities to generate revenue and to strengthen their connections with fans.

“At UMG, we have long-embraced empowering entrepreneurs and innovative services such as SoundCloud,” said Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group. “With this partnership, we’re ensuring recording artists, songwriters and labels benefit, both creatively and commercially, from the exciting new forms of music community engagement on SoundCloud. We look forward to working with SoundCloud and supporting the company’s evolution into a successful commercial service.” 

“With this partnership with UMG we will further strengthen and grow the unique community we’ve built over the past seven years, where multiple forms of expression can live and where artists at every stage of their careers come to create and share their work,” said Alexander Ljung, SoundCloud Founder & CEO. “Bringing together the world’s largest audio platform and the world’s largest music company means we are able to further expand SoundCloud’s role as a critical platform for creators and open up its benefits to UMG’s extensive roster of artists.”

Ljung continued: “With the majority of the music industry partnering with us, and adding to the more than 100 million tracks already available to discover on the platform, we are able to offer a service to both creators and listeners that is unrivalled in the music streaming space today