Having recently launched an office in the USA, Mixcloud focuses on connecting listeners to the world’s best radio. Their story is a unique one: they self-funded the growth of the platform, launched in 2009, and now boast an impressive 10 million monthly users.
Mixcloud have always had an eye on revenue in parallel with growth. Up until now their business model was primarily focused on advertising from major consumer brands, innovating in branded content and native advertising for music.
Mixcloud Co-founder and CTO Mat Clayton on launching subscription plans: “From a business model point of view, the objective is to both diversify and smoothen our revenue, with the objective of growing our direct to consumer business to 25 per cent of total revenue by the end of the quarter. Additionally we think it’s important to have a product that allows our users to pay for the Mixcloud service. This sets the precedent that content and services on the Internet are valuable.”
The PRO account package, priced at $15/month, is aimed at the content uploaders who publish their radio shows, DJ sets and podcasts to Mixcloud. This package offers a sophisticated analytics dashboard to track your listeners by size, source and location. The killer feature of Mixcloud’s analytics package is undoubtedly their “engagement graphs” which reveal to content creators for the first time where their listeners are dropping off
The listener Premium account, priced at $6.99/month offers an uncluttered ad-free listening experience. These paid accounts also enable more money to flow back to the original artists and rights holders, thus further supporting the music community. The alternative is to stream DJ sets and radio shows via unlicensed platforms – an issue that has been causing recent frustration due to copyright takedowns.
Mixcloud reported a 60 per cent increase in total listening time since the launch of their new web platform – “Mixcloud X” – in January this year. To help continue drive this growth they are launching a ‘Repost’ feature, allowing users to easily share content across a number of profiles.
