Madeon states Sony has taken down his music from SoundCloud ‘against his will’

Sony’s takedown of its artists’ music on SoundCloud made some waves last week due to the sheer popularity of the acts involved, which included Adele and Kelly Clarkson.

Those artists though are not ‘native’ to SoundCloud and Sony’s decision is likely to impact more strongly on artists who are plugged into the community of users that revolves around the service. 

EDM artist Madeon is just one such artist, and the friction between what he thinks of SoundCloud and Sony’s position was made apparent after - when questioned on why his tracks were being taken down - he stated that it was Sony’s decision and ‘against his will’ even stating: ‘well done Sony for holding your own artists hostage’, although he later clarified that his comments were aimed at the corporate side of Sony, not Columbia Records. 

Madeon has over 340k followers on SoundCloud, the music platform is still a go-to place for electronic musicians who use it to share new ideas/mixes and get feedback from their community. Madeon even tweeted ‘Thank you SoundCloud for being such a great discovery platform over the past five years’. 

At this stage it’s hard to tell whether Sony is actually holding its artists hostage in order to secure a better/deal advances from SoundCloud or whether it has abandoned the idea of a deal altogether. 

Although unpleasant, this situation will not affect the majority of Sony artists who do not use SoundCloud themselves, so Madeon’s move is unlikely to create a new wave of support from fellow artists, especially as many are growing weary of making music available on SoundCloud when platforms like YouTube at least provide some form of monetisation even if not particularly substantial. 

For now, this just another chapter in what could be a long drawn-out process given the Warner is still the only major to have signed a content licensing deal with SoundCloud.

 

(Andrea Leonelli)