Despite the mire of copyright politics plaguing Soundcloud of late, shreds of hope are beginning to surface for the service’s future.
Now that Soundcloud is drifting towards an advert centric business model, it’s prudent to identify as much as possible about their clientele, proving to marketers their streaming service is a smart investment. A look at the site’s top ten most played artists reveals some interesting facts about its user base. They care about music. Not just their old favorites, but discovering new music. This would be a perfect segway into ranting about how much of that new music likely samples copyrighted material, but I won’t. Instead, let’s look at the cloud of sounds as half-full instead of half-empty.
[column size=one_half position=first ] 
Top ten artists on Spotify:
1. Calvin Harris
2. Chris Brown
3. Drake
4. Ed Sheeran
5. Pitbull
6. Sam Smith
7. David Guetta
8. Wiz Khalifa
9. Nicki Minaj
10. Ellie Goulding
[/column]
[column size=one_half position=last ]
Top ten artists on Soundcloud:
1. Drake
2. Major Lazer
3. G-Eazy
4. Future
5. Kygo
6. PARTYNEXTDOOR
7. Chris Brown
8. Kid Ink
9. The Weeknd
10. Chance The Rapper
[/column]
Compared to the stale demographics surrounding mainstream artists found in the top ten of Youtube and Spotify, Soundcloud is in a position to offer exciting new data for advertising agencies. And while Drake and Chris Brown aren’t exactly underground, rising talent such as Future, The Weeknd, and PARTYNEXTDOOR are still flying relatively under the radar. It’s no secret that industry giants like UMG and Sony are quickly bullying the once-loved service into an early demise. So instead of focusing on securing returns for their uber stars, companies need to realize the value of this particular service lay in the development of the smaller artists they’re currently victimizing.
H/T Forbes
