Last week SoundCloud, a Berlin-based music distribution platform, confirmed rumors that it is launching a subscription service later this year. Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Eric Wahlforss said the company is looking to generate a third revenue stream to help cover the costs of royalty payments to music artists.Currently, SoundCloud offers over 100 million tracks of music uploaded by artists and DJs, including original tracks, remixes and DJ sets, said the Wall Street Journal. Users can listen to SoundCloud online or through its mobile app. The service is supported by advertising and through revenue earned by artists who upload the music. By comparison, in May, Digital Trends reported that Spotify has 20 million tracks, and Pandora only has 1 million.In the announcement, Wahlforss did not share details or costs for the subscription service, but based on details in a leaked contract, Radio.com speculates there will be three plans. The free service will reportedly include a limited catalog of music that will be supported by advertising. Two additional tiers will offer more music and features, but in exchange for a monthly subscription. In addition to these changes, SoundCloud is revising its royalty payouts to artists based on the percentage of streaming revenue it receives from subscribers.Insider Take:We signed up for a SoundCloud account, and while we are definitely newbies to the site, we are more confused than ever. According to the Help/Payments & Billing screen, SoundCloud already has a subscription service with three tiers. Unless they launched this immediately following last week’s announcement, we are confused.

 How will the new offering differ from this? We have no idea. We’ve emailed support for an explanation, but haven’t received a response yet. We’ll let you know when we do. In the meantime, it would be great if SoundCloud would make a formal announcement, or even explain what to expect and when on their blog.