SoundCloud will bless popular artists with blue checkmarks to weed out copycats

From Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to Tinder and Bumble, blue checkmarks have become a staple of social platforms. But they’ve long been missing from one particular service — SoundCloud. Well, that’s changing.

In an announcement on its website, the music service revealed it’ll start displaying blue checkmarks next to the profiles of verified creators. “We’re doing this to help well-known artists stand out and maintain their authenticity, and to help listeners identify these artists more easily,” the company said.

SoundCloud says it’s already verified a list of top-performing artists, including Billie Eilish, Wiz Khalifa, and Trippie Redd, but the procedure is technically open to anyone. Creators will, however, have to meet certain criteria to get the blue checkmark. Here are the requirements:

• It represents a well-known and/or highly searched-for artist, collective, DJ, label, curator or podcaster.
• It must be a unique profile. SoundCloud won’t verify fan accounts or impersonators.
• It doesn’t contain any misleading information and adheres to SoundCloud’s terms of use.
• It must have a bio, profile photo and at least one track uploaded.

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Pretty straightforward.

Those interested in joining the blue tick club can log in to their accounts via SoundCloud’s desktop site, head to settings, and click on the “Request verification” button.