8tracks streaming music service wants to be ‘better friend’ to indies

US firm 8tracks [...] and has become an under-the-radar success: not just popular, but profitable too. Some achievement given that most streaming music services are losing money by the sackful. [...] 8tracks launched in August 2008, bootstrapped by its founders, and ran for three years with “a little bit of cash from angel investors to pay our royalty bills” before raising a $1.2m seed round in 2011, then another $1.4m in 2014. The basic service is free with advertising, but also offers a “Plus” tier for subscribers to pay $25 every six months to remove the ads [...] Some tracks are streamed from SoundCloud, via an integration with that service that means for those songs “the artist or label has waived their royalties”. However, [David Porter] says 8tracks thinks a lot about how it can be “a better friend” to independent labels in particular. “We’re working towards direct deals with labels, certainly on the indie side of things where there’s more flexibility than with the majors,” he says. - Stuart Dredge,The Guardian [via/web:http://streaming-tv.us]