There's a lot of up and coming artists on SoundCloud. I could totally see them selling a service that replaces record labels for artists starting out. Stuff like helping with mixing and sound quality, basic advertising and branding, maybe booking a few shows. If SoundCloud became like an incubator or accelerator for artists, they could get some top artists early. Billie Eilish for instance started on SoundCloud. Imagine if SoundCloud, having access to all their streaming data, noticed the song Ocean Eyes blowing up and offered 14 year old Billie Eilish a contract. They'd have made millions by now.<p>Plus it's not like you need to invest a shitton into up and coming artists. Most of them need a band, some recording studio hours, and some marketing. The marketing is probably the most expensive one, but SoundCloud has easy, free marketing: put the artist on the front page. If SC did this for maybe 25-50 artists a year, they could easily get a Billie Eilish or a mumble rapper or two. It's not like there's many other places to post music as a young artist.<p>Edit: Or even if SoundCloud can't act as a record label for fear of stepping on actual record labels, they can still build a solid referral relationship. They have the ultimate first look deal.