Aspiring artists can take a long breath, a sigh of relief, with music streaming service SoundCloud making a big announcement to start the week.
On December 7th, the online magazine Groove published an interview with one of SoundCloud's founders, Eric Wahlforss, who gave some updates on how the new updates to the service's apps, as well as SoundCloud Go that were released last month will impact users' access to music. After reaching agreements with necessary parties like Germany's GEMA, SoundCloud hopes to see user accounts getting flagged and suspended for including certain content not authorized by its owner, are "are a thing of the past," for both those who are subscribers to the premium access accounts and for those who aren't. Until now, to include licensed music in a mix, users would need to obtain permission ("get whitelisted" in industry speak) to avoid getting their mix flagged.
This update to attempt to regain some of SoundCloud's original appeal to aspiring artists comes at a time amidst rumors of a Spotify-SoundCloud merger.