Music streaming sites are starting to pick up in popularity, and now some of them really want to take advantage from an advertising point, without flooding the site with a bunch of unnecessary ads. SoundCloud may have found the ideal way to do that by introducing a series of new ad products that it believes will draw new revenue for the site, along the same lines as Spotify and Pandora.
Ads from the likes of Red Bull, Sonos, Comedy Central, Jaguar and Squarespace will be available over the next few weeks, as part of a new campaign called On Sound Initiative. With it, promotions will feature the labels and distributors, comedy networks, independent artists and other programming. As mentioned, the ads won’t overlap the interface, and as a result of taking part content creators will receive part of the profits.
The introduction of this campaign could bring about new subscription pricing for the site. “We’re introducing advertising into the service now,” said Jeff Toig, Chief Business Officer at SoundCloud. “In the coming months, we’re going to introduce a subscription offering that allows people to remove ads if they want to remove ads, and it will have other features.” And, as expected, it will be completely optional for those who just want to sit back and chill with their favorite tunes.
As part of the campaign, there will also be promoted tracks, which provide a push to certain content through the desktop and mobile music streams. “Similar to (how a Promoted) Tweet on Twitter is a real tweet, it’s just promoted, these native ads are actually tracks that Squarespace will upload and then we promote,” said Dan Gerber, head of sales over at SoundCloud.
Squarespace currently offers a ten percent discount off its services through the campaign, while Red Bull is highlighting six individual artists through its set-up as well. So it sounds like it benefits quite a lot more than the usual business partners.
Audio ads are also being introduced, and these cannot be skipped, as they play out for about 15 seconds before the start of a song — similar to how YouTube sets up some of its videos. This program has already kicked off, as a few listeners may have already noticed.
What do you think Is this a smart promotional move for SoundCloud
Source: Adweek
