“Many in the industry have wanted this for years.

SoundCloud is the first in the music-streaming world to shake up the revenue structure. But it’s a salient righting of the ship from a company that in 2015 was sued by a British music industry group representing more than 111,000 songwriters and publishers for copyright infringement and unpaid royalties. The new system does have a few catches-it takes into account how many advertisements the fan has consumed, and whether or not the fan has a paying subscription to SoundCloud Go+. All independent artists who monetize directly with SoundCloud are eligible to partake in the new model. The more fans listen to a musician’s music, the more that musician gets paid. In contrast to the conventional model where royalties from streams go into a pool that's paid out to artists based on their share of total streams, the new system will pay out artists based on their fans' listening habits.

Its new “fan-powered” royalties structure aims to level the field for indie artists by delivering money the service makes from listeners directly to the musicians they listen to. SoundCloud next month will roll out a new revenue model on its platform, which reaches 175 million users per month and counts 76 million active monthly users.

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