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SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

factmag.com

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Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

#11

Post by runn1ng »

djt wrote: post #7

All my production buddies hate it. They pay full price, your the world and yet Soundcloud take down the tracks that they OWN. With no recourse or apology. Their system has been broken for 5 years at least for the power users in the community.

Another anecdote: I have played with their JavaScript API about 2 or 3 years ago and it was constantly broken, with no way to report those bugs.

Their support page states "ask on StackOverflow" as it stated back then, which is a terrible way to report bugs. https://developers.soundcloud.com/support

Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

#12

Post by pavlov »

They raised $77M USD last year. The auditor's statement is just standard boilerplate for a company that's losing money.

Given the involvement of big investors, it seems extremely unlikely that SoundCloud would shut down rather than raise another round or get acquired.

Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

#14

Post by strgrd »

I've been a daily soundcloud user for almost 6 years. At some point they gave up on trying to change or improve the user experience. Soundcloud has done nothing to facilitate the growth of users who focus on reposting/finding/sharing/curating content, vs. content creators who upload their own music. There is no way to gain a following or reputation as someone who reposts content on soundcloud -- and even if you have that following, there's no way to communicate to your audience.

In three years, it seems they've just made the UI elements bigger, and added background images for songs and profiles. I was really hoping to see the ability to post text messages into people's timelines. Something to communicate to your followers.

Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

#17

Post by nbzklr »

hathym wrote: post #3
petercooper wrote: post #2

I hope this is just an alarmist headline. SoundCloud is pretty essential in its space, it's one of the few services that lets you natively get audio on to Twitter, the main place musicians share snapshots of their work and remixes, and a key part of numerous podcasts and ways to embed easily shared audio on the Web. This is one startup I absolutely don't want to see go down the pan.

have you ever paid a cent to soundcloud?

It's the content creators who pay soundcloud. I would totally pay them "a cent", but there are no premium plans for consumers/listeners.

Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

#18

Post by raesene4 »

rgbrenner wrote: post #10

Article is bs. they lost 44m in _2014_. Raised 77m last year. They may need to raise more in 2016. Nothing else. No other facts. No info on their balance sheet, etc. Doesn't even know if they're growing, what their revenue or losses for 2015 were. And based on that, Fact thinks that's enough to say they "may be forced to close".

I'm not sure I'd agree there's no other facts. links from the article include excerpts from their financial accounts which don't look good (losing 39M on a 17M turnover is not healthy).

And the quote from the auditor is significant, auditors don't put that kind of thing in unless they have to as it annoys their customers to be reminded that there's significant concern over their ability to continue operations.

Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

#19

Post by cellover »

hathym wrote: post #3
petercooper wrote: post #2

I hope this is just an alarmist headline. SoundCloud is pretty essential in its space, it's one of the few services that lets you natively get audio on to Twitter, the main place musicians share snapshots of their work and remixes, and a key part of numerous podcasts and ways to embed easily shared audio on the Web. This is one startup I absolutely don't want to see go down the pan.

have you ever paid a cent to soundcloud?

As a music producer I pay 79 EUR / year since 2011 because I enjoy having a practically unlimited storage space for my own productions, may it be a complete song or stems (individual instruments) that I share with musicians I collaborate with.

80% of the tracks on my account are private. I mostly use Soundcloud as a musical post-it system so I can easily listen to my productions in different settings (car, friend's hifi system, earphones etc.), share tracks with label in a "secure" fashion.

I was really saddened to see they introduced ads even for people who actually pay for their service, I felt literally betrayed and angry but fortunately it did not last long. However it leaves traces.

I still find it amazing that they did not introduce basic filters for the stream, like "just grab house mixes at least 45 minutes long"...

Anyway, I am still quite happy with the service even if I could do the same on my own dedicated server, minus the social network thing.

I just wish them good luck but I hope that their longevity will not be due to ads served even to subscribers...

Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

#20

Post by diezge »

strgrd wrote: post #14

I've been a daily soundcloud user for almost 6 years. At some point they gave up on trying to change or improve the user experience. Soundcloud has done nothing to facilitate the growth of users who focus on reposting/finding/sharing/curating content, vs. content creators who upload their own music. There is no way to gain a following or reputation as someone who reposts content on soundcloud -- and even if you have…

And the annoying bug on the native mobile app where it randomly stops playing, which has been a problem for so long and still hasn't been fixed despite the companies worth...
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