Known by many as the ‘YouTube for music’, Soundcloud is said to be worth around $700m – double Twitter’s biggest purchase to date, the ad network MoPub, which they bought for around $350m. Both companies declined to comment on the supposed deal, but Recode.net are reporting that Twitter want to buy Soundcloud.

Twitter and Soundcloud logos

SoundCloud, based in Berlin, is a free service that lets users upload and share audio files around the Web. Last year, Twitter launched a doomed stand-alone Twitter Music app, which was canned in March. This could be the micro-blogging, social media giant’s way of reinventing the instant music sharing dynamic they so obviously crave. 

For some industry observers, Twitter and SoundCloud as one makes sense for both parties. "A deal like this makes sense for Twitter, [because] it gives them a much needed push into media and adds into their business another really interesting and popular publishing platform," said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

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"If SoundCloud can get a favorable music licensing deal to make right how their users get access to published songs, then we could see that music become even more deeply embedded into Twitter apps," he added, according to Cnet.

Despite Twitter’s size, Soundcloud have a similar amount of users, if their own stats are to be believed. But one of the biggest aspects of the deal is Soundcloud’s lack of official deals to stream songs. Without any currently in place, the ‘YouTube for music’ is actually very similar to the YouTube for Music circa 5 years ago – i.e., no official capacity to stream copyrighted songs. Any deal with Twitter would up the pressure for those kind of deals to be signed, while some artists do exploit the vast reach Soundcloud has by uploading songs themselves. 

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