SoundCloud Monetization: Ultimate Guide to Music Monetization

SoundCloud has quietly built one of the most artist-friendly monetization systems in the music industry, especially for independent creators. While Spotify pays based on total global streams (the pro-rata model), SoundCloud’s Fan-powered model pays you based on how much your actual fans listen to you. This shift in approach creates a more equitable playing field for DIY artists, giving them a better shot at making real money from loyal listeners.

How It Works

SoundCloud divides its revenue into two buckets:

• Pro Pool: Revenue from users who stream artists enrolled in SoundCloud Pro. This pool uses a Fan-Powered model - each user’s revenue goes to the artists they actually listen to.
• Non-Pro Pool: Revenue from streams of artists not enrolled in Pro. This follows the pro-rata model used by Spotify, where revenue is shared based on total platform streams.

Under the Fan-Powered model:

• If a listener spends 100% of their time streaming you, you get 100% of the revenue from that listener.
• Even free users contribute to your earnings through ad revenue, which scales with time spent streaming your music.

Why It’s Great

Free On-Demand Access for Listeners

Unlike Spotify, which limits how ad-supported users can listen, SoundCloud gives them full, on-demand access. If a listener wants to replay your song 100 times, nothing stops them. Every stream drives ad revenue, and most of it goes to you if you're a Pro artist.

Less Competition, More Opportunity

Many songs on SoundCloud are restricted to Go+ subscribers, reducing the noise for artists in the Pro program. This creates more opportunities to be featured on editorial and algorithmic playlists and increases your chances of being discovered by casual listeners.

Built-In Promotion

Every SoundCloud Pro user gets automatic promotion for each track they upload. Each release is pushed to up to 1,000 targeted users, offering a promotional boost that helps build your fanbase with every drop.

The Drawbacks

No Credit for Driving Traffic

Fan-Powered models only reward artists who get streamed, not the ones who bring fans to the platform. If 10,000 people visit SoundCloud because of your new release, but end up streaming other artists, you earn nothing from the traffic you brought, even if their subscriptions or ad views were triggered by your presence.

SoundCloud offers an affiliate program to help with this, but it caps earnings at just $150 per account, which is a poor trade for high-value traffic drivers.

Thriving on SoundCloud

Fan-Powered is a game of quality and quantity. Sure, one song can rack up streams from an individual user, but it’s easier if that user has multiple songs from the same artist in their library. SoundCloud has a tool called Fans that showcases an artist’s heaviest streamers and allows direct messaging at no cost. This grant artists the ability to communicate with their biggest fans and drive deeper connection and engagement.

Takeaway

SoundCloud’s Fan-Powered model is a breath of fresh air for indie artists. It rewards deep engagement and gives artists a direct line to fan-driven revenue, without gatekeeping playback on the free tier. While it’s not perfect, especially for artists who drive platform traffic without converting streams, it’s one of the few platforms where loyalty, not virality, actually pays.