Sony Music has moved to take down more music from SoundCloud.

Earlier this month the label began removing original recordings from the SoundCloud pages of a handful of major artists, blaming “a lack of monetization opportunities” on the platform, and now the major appears to be stepping up its campaign.

This week French producer Madeon warned fans that his own tracks would be disappearing within days as he criticised “Sony Corporate’s disconnected-from-reality strategy”.

“Sony will take down all of my music from my SoundCloud account in the next few days, let’s have a farewell listen”, he tweeted. “Thank you SoundCloud for being such a great discovery platform over the past five years. Well done Sony for holding your own artists hostage”.

Sony and other major labels have been in licensing negotiations with SoundCloud for several months, with Warner Music reaching a deal with the platform last year. However, most of the majors think that SoundCloud can’t provide the promised pot of gold for artists, despite the platform making moves to monitor copyright and monetise its content through advertising in recent months.

As CMU reports, the boss of Sony Music-allied EDM label Ultra Music yesterday told the International Music Summit in Ibiza that SoundCloud is years away from generating income for songwriters.

“I think that SoundCloud is fantastic because there are 100,000 creators uploading new music to [the platform] every night. But what do they pay artists and writers right now? Little to nothing. Will they pay anybody anything in the near future? Not really,” said Patrick Moxey.

“What electronic artists are going to get out of SoundCloud financially in the next few years is close to nothing. Once you realise that then you’ll realise that you do have to protect the guys that are trying to pay the artists and the labels.”

SoundCloud boss Alexander Ljung is set to offer his take on the quandary in his own interview at IMS later this week. Madeon’s tracks are still available to stream on the platform for now, so perhaps his public foot-stomping has put the brakes on Sony’s plan for the moment.

If you’re fed up with the barrage of takedown notices on your DJ mixes, check out our six alternatives to SoundCloud.

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