Published
Tue, May 9, 2023, 17:00
- Artists will be able to direct message their most loyal listeners.
SoundCloud is rolling out its new "Fans" feature, which allows artists to engage more with their listeners.
Now available on SoundCloud for Artists, users are able to identify their most valuable fans, determined via listening behaviour, comments, sharing and location. Artists are also able to send direct messages to keep fans up to date on upcoming releases, merch, tickets and more.
Yesterday, May 8th, "Fans" was made available to 50,000 Next Pro artists. The tool was being tested by 10,000 artists for six weeks before that. It's currently still in beta.
"At SoundCloud, we believe that artists should have direct access to their fans," the company's Tracy Chan wrote in a statement. "Our company was founded and built on helping artists share and connect through music. And, let's face it: building a fanbase (and being able to activate those fans when you need to) is the only real way to make music your livelihood."
In March, SoundCloud announced a new royalty structure to incentivise deeper relationships between artists and fans. This new feature uses some of the more granular data collected from the fan-powered revenue system and is also designed to generate more profit for artists.
Read Chan's statement in full.