How does Monetisation work on SoundCloud?

Monetisation on SoundCloud can generally happen in three different ways:

1. Directly by artist
2. Through supply chain
3. Manual uploads which are later monetised by a rightsholder

Let’s take a closer look at these three:

1. Directly by artist:
You can monetise your manually uploaded tracks, however there are a few criteria that have to be met in order to monetise content yourself. Here’s a guide on how to do just that.

2. Supply Chain Monetisation:
You might have content on your SoundCloud profile that belongs to you but has been uploaded by SoundCloud. This type of content is called ‘ingested content’ – or ‘supply chain content’ – and this is the content that rightsholders/digital distributors deliver to the platform. Your rightsholder(s) manage this content and you are unable to make changes to it. The same goes for us at SoundCloud: We can't edit supply chain content without direct permission from the relevant rightsholder(s). 

Supply chain content monetises automatically once it has been delivered with active commercial deals. Its availability is subject to the territories in which SoundCloud has launched monetisation. Outside of SoundCloud’s launched territories, supply chain content is not available and will appear as greyed-out on SoundCloud. 

For more information about rightsholders & digital distribution please see this article.

Why can’t you (or SoundCloud) make changes to ingested content?

The digital distributor may have the exclusive rights to distribute the content on digital platforms. Please see our article on Rightsholder content for further information. 

Are you experiencing issues with supply chain tracks not playing in certain territories?

This is most likely because the country in question is not a territory we're launched in for monetisation; therefore, tracks delivered to your profile by your rightsholder are blocked for playback.

What to do?

Please get in touch with your rightsholder who may be able to allowlist your account, which will give you the ability to manually upload these tracks for playback in all territories.

3. Manually Monetising Content

In addition to delivery of content via the supply chain, rightsholders have the option to monetise manually uploaded content on SoundCloud too. They may only do this on artist or label profiles with whom they have a direct contractual relationship.

How do I monetise a manual track?

You as a user can either turn on monetisation for a manually uploaded track on behalf of yourself or on behalf of a rightsholder. If you wish to monetise tracks on behalf of a rightsholder, your profile must be within a rightsholder’s monetisation network. To get your profile added to a rightsholder Network, you will need to contact your rightsholder to request this. After the profile linking has taken place, you will have the option to monetise under this particular rightsholder.

You can turn on monetisation under the ‘Monetisation’ tab when logged into your profile, under Tracks → Edit (pencil icon) → Monetisation. Within the 'Monetisation' tab, you have the option to choose the rightsholder and territories to turn on for monetisation. This tab also allows you to select the rightsholder per territory in the case of split rights. You can confirm the monetisation by clicking ‘Enable Monetisation’ at the bottom right of the page. If this view is unavailable to you, please contact support. 

If you would like to remove a monetisation claim on an individual track, you can do this in the ‘Monetisation’ Tab within the back-end of your profile. Rightsholders can also process the removal and adjustments of rights on multiple manually monetised tracks.