Digital Music News brought the news just this week that Spotify has suddenly decided to cancel the possibility for an independent artist to directly upload their music onto the platform, which was then distributed to competing platforms. The artists that participated in Spotify’s beta stage distribution were given only 30 days to relocate.
According to DMN, while the number of independent artists that dealt directly with Spotify was only a few hundred in number, STEM, the LA startup that had the same program and distributed the music to streaming platforms that included both Spotify and Apple Music, abandoned “tens of thousands of artists.”
But then, SoundCloud decided to step in. It recently acquired Repost Network, what it calls “the world’s largest open audio platform,” which is an invite-only distribution platform. SoundCloud plans to offer it as a way out to all those artists left in the cold.
In one of its Instagram posts, the platform stated: “Today, we’re calling all independent creators who have been impacted by recent changes on Spotify and Stem to come to SoundCloud to learn more about what the world’s largest audio platform can do for them.”
Repost VP Jeff Ponchick said that, “With the acquisition of Repost, an invite-only distribution service offering distribution, content protection and marketing to its thousands of clients, creators have the opportunity to build their careers on their own terms with maximum flexibility based on where they are in their career.”
