Major Lazer & Bacardi tap Soundcloud to host talent-scouting initiative, ‘Music Liberates Music’

2017 marked a year for Soundcloud that almost became an utter PR demolition for the German music streaming platform. Funds were running scarce, employees were laid off, CEOs were fired, huge investors like Twitter pulled out, and vocal advocates like Chance The Rapper came to the rescue in attempts to keep the company afloat.

Now Soundcloud has emerged from the ashes of near-annihilation, attracting some hefty partnerships in the process. The most recent of which is adult-beverage brand Bacardi, whose looking to expand the scope of their long-running branding campaign in partnership with Major Lazer. The initiative, dubbed ‘Music Liberates Music,’ seeks out promising young talent looking to start out in the industry. So, naturally, Soundcloud was the perfect destination for such a venture. After all, the streaming platform has been synonymous with giving Chance a space to promote his early music — and the rest is, how they say, history.

According to Digital Music News, SoundCloud will be hosting entries by new artists from the US, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas. The entries will then be critiqued and vetted by Diplo, Jillionaire, and Walshy Fire in the platform’s comments section, narrowed down to 12 finalists, and four winners will emerge. From there, the artists’ fate will be crowd-sourced by Soundcloud users, with engagement factors like number of plays, shares, and likes as the ultimate deciding factor in who takes home the grand prize. What’s that grand prize, you say? Why, a fully-funded music video production from Bacardi.

View official contest rules and submit a track, here.

H/T: Digital Music News