SoundCloud Lets Artists Sell Music Directly to Fans — and Keep Every Cent

SoundCloud will begin letting artists sell songs directly from their profile pages, the platform announced on 26 August 2026. Around 200 artists on SoundCloud's Artist Pro tier — its paid subscription for creators who want distribution, monetisation and audience analytics — are being invited into a beta version of the feature starting the same day. Billboard

Here is how it works. Participating creators set a price for eligible tracks through Artist Studio and the platform's Fan Support Dashboard. Fans who buy a song can download it in either MP3 or compressed-lossless WAV format. And the split is the part that catches the eye: artists keep 100% of each direct sale, minus standard processing fees and taxes.

SoundCloud plans to gather feedback from the initial group before opening the feature more widely, with broader availability expected in the autumn. The company's CEO is Eliah Seton, who has positioned direct purchases as part of a broader push to give independent musicians more ways to earn from their existing audience on the platform.

That push has been building. In October 2025, SoundCloud dropped the 20% cut it had previously taken from artists distributing their music to other streaming services — Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok and YouTube — letting creators on its Artist and Artist Pro plans keep 100% of those royalties. Artists also keep 100% of royalties for streams on SoundCloud's own platform, under what the company calls its fan-powered royalties model, which pays artists based on listening from their actual followers rather than pooling all streams into one pot.

The company has layered on other revenue tools over the past year. A Fan Support program launched in October allows listeners to donate between $1 and $1,000 in exchange for their names appearing on an artist's page. In July 2025, SoundCloud partnered with elasticStage to offer print-on-demand vinyl — meaning a fan can order a record and it gets pressed only when purchased, with no upfront manufacturing cost or minimum run.

For a platform long associated with free uploads and bedroom demos, the direction is unmistakable. SoundCloud is building a toolkit that lets an artist upload a track, distribute it to every major streaming service, press it to vinyl, accept fan donations and now sell downloads directly — all from one dashboard, all without a label in between.

Whether independent artists will route their sales through SoundCloud rather than platforms like Bandcamp, which built its name on direct-to-fan purchases, is an open question the beta will begin to answer. The 100% payout (minus fees) is the pitch. The next few months of feedback will determine how wide it goes.