What is Soundcloud? Music-sharing website which could be bought by Google – here’s what we know
The music site could be snapped up by Google after talks with Spotify fell through
SOUNDCLOUD is rumoured to be in takeover talks with Google - just weeks after a possible deal with Spotify fell through.
But what is the streaming site, how much is it worth and how is it different from other sites?
Here's what we know...
What is Soundcloud?
The Berlin-based site was launched in 2007 as a social media network for musicians to record, upload and share their work with others.
It soon became a way of musicians distributing their work to listeners - challenging MySpace as the dominant platform because of its flexibility.
Artists including Sonic Youth, Moby and Beck turned to SoundCloud to release new tracks, with no file-size limit.
But SoundCloud had no deals set up with the major music companies, causing problems because copyrighted material kept being uploaded onto the site and used in remixes.
Some feared a massive copyright infringement lawsuit was just around the corner, and striking up the necessary deals was a slow process.
The company eventually managed to strike up a deal with the Warner Music Group in November 2014, followed by Merlin in 2015, Universal Music Group and Sony Music in 2016.
In September, after posting subsequent losses, the company was revealed to have boosted its top line revenues by 43% in just one year, reported .
Is SoundCloud free?
The original site was completely free, but later launched Soundcloud Go, its premium subscription service in 2016.
At £9.99 a month, it allows users to listen offline and ad-free with access to more tracks than the free version.
Following the various deals with the big music companies, more and more big name artists have been uploading tracks to the site.
How much is SoundCloud worth?
The site has previously been valued at between $700m and $1billion, but the potential Google deal is said to be worth $500m.
At the end of last year, Spotify was reported to be interested in buying SoundCloud, but the companies were unable to agree on a price.
According to, SoundCloud lowered its price tag from $1b during takeover negotiations with Spotify.
TechCrunch reported that the deal fell through because of the potential "licensing headache" of negotiating with music labels.
How is SoundCloud different from Spotify?
The sharing site has more than 130million tracks on offer - far more than Spotify's 30m.
Many of these are DJ mixes, remixes and podcasts which are exclusive to SoundCloud and can't be found anywhere else.
So users can create playlists of amateur musicians, podcasts and big name artists - as well as being able to comment on them and share feedback.
But Business Insider estimated last year that the site only had around 15million songs which you couldn't get on the free version.
However since then, the site appears to have expanded its SoundCloud Go offering, including hundreds of tracks by big names such as Kanye West.
How many people are on SoundCloud?
The site has more users than any other streaming service, with more than 175million users to date.
Spotify has around 100million, of which around a third are paid users - but has to pay 70% of its revenue to record labels.
While it isn't known how many users have signed up to SoundCloud Go, industry experts estimate it is only around 250,000, according to .
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