Portishead have made their cover of ABBA's "SOS" available through a new royalty arrangement intended to make streaming payouts fairer
Sebastian Gabsch/Geisler-Fotopre/picture-alliance/dpa/AP ImagesPortishead are commercially releasing their 2016 cover of ABBA’s “SOS” for the first time, exclusively through SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalty program, the two groups tell Rolling Stone.
The influential trip-hop act originally recorded their version of the Swedish pop hit for a film soundtrack; until now, it could only be found on YouTube. It now becomes one of the higher-profile songs to be released through SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalty program, which launched in April with lofty goals of making the streaming economy more equitable for artists.
“When we heard that SoundCloud switched to a fairer user-centric payment system of streaming music, we were happy to make it the only place to stream our unreleased version of ABBA’s ‘SOS,’” Portishead’s Geoff Barrow said in a statement. “After recording it years ago for Ben Wheatley’s film High-Rise, we are excited to finally share it with the world, and we are even more excited that all streaming profits are going to a great cause.”
Added Michael Pelczynski, SoundCloud’s head of content and rights holder strategy: “Portishead’s timeless sound has inspired countless artists and given rise to many emerging genres on SoundCloud. We are honored Portishead chose SoundCloud, the only platform where the artist to fan connection is directly rewarded, as the first place to exclusively release their cover of this iconic song.”
The concept of fan-powered royalties has been discussed in the industry since the streaming era began in the 2010s. Right now, services like Apple Music and Spotify pay music rights holders using a formula based on artists’ percentage of the overall streaming market. This means that a song’s individual stream royalties don’t necessarily go directly to the artist who made that song, but rather to a larger pool which is then divvied up based on who has the most listens. Such a model benefits the highest superstars like Drake or Ariana Grande, but smaller and lesser-streamed acts often take less.
Both signed and independent artists have been vocal for years about their frustrations over music streaming’s current business model, unsure why their hundreds of thousands or even millions of streams each month result in comparatively little return. SoundCloud is testing out this alternative model; Spotify, for its part, launched a website in March looking to pull the curtain back on how its business operates, arguing that the old way people quantify listening and success doesn’t make sense in a new listening world in which customers play a flat monthly fee to access more music than ever before.
SoundCloud’s move comes at a time where artists are demanding more clarity as well as change from the streaming giants. In the fan-powered model, a listener’s streaming cash will go directly toward the music they consume, and only there. SoundCloud says fan-powered royalties will benefit rising independent artists, but the system has yet to be proven on a mass level. (Charlie Hellman, Spotify’s head of marketplace, told Rolling Stone in March that its own studies on fan-powered royalty payments didn’t yield a significant shift toward higher payments for smaller artists.)
Beyond the potential cash rewards, advocates for the newer system say fan-powered royalties encourage more transparency.
“If you’re one of the biggest artists, you are going to be rewarded [in the current system],” Merck Mercuriadis, CEO of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, told Rolling Stone in March. “If you’re an indie artist right now, you’re probably losing out to artists that are being given a high promotional profile by the record companies, but that are, in fact, not actually getting the level of spins that the hype might make you think that they’re getting.”
Suki Waterhouse has spoken candidly about how she found herself crying constantly after the birth of her daughter.
The singer and actress reflected on her experience as a mother more than two years after she and her partner, actor Robert Pattinson, welcomed their baby girl in March 2024.
During an interview with The Standard published on Thursday, Suki explained that motherhood has completely shifted her outlook on life.
"I think it's made me marvel at our humanness. It's so funny, even just your kid getting a fever, watching a little body recover from that, it's brought me down to what it is to be alive and I really love that," she said. "It feels very survivalist and medieval in a way, especially birth, birth is medieval."
The Daisy Jones & The Six actress, 34, shared that she was caught off guard by just how exposed and emotional she felt after giving birth to her daughter.
"I'm almost two and a half years in now, but when she was first born, I remember thinking that I can't believe everybody does this and I can't believe how vulnerable I feel," she told the publication. "I was crying all the time."
Suki continued, "It makes me cry now thinking about it. It was just... shocking."
The Notting Hill singer also admitted that she has never considered herself someone who cries easily, making those emotions all the more surprising.
"It's so f**king weird! I'm not a cryer! I'm so not an emotional person, I'm such a Capricorn. But being a mum just fed me up in such a sweet way," she stated. "It just absolutely broke open my heart, and I'm just madly in love and, despite my crying right now, I enjoy it so much and I'm so taken by my daughter and so in love with doing it with my partner and I just feel the preciousness of it very much."
Suki and Twilight actor Robert, 40, have been in a relationship since 2018 and announced they were expecting their first child together toward the end of 2023.
The pair have largely kept their romance away from the spotlight and have yet to publicly share the name of their daughter.
