SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by distances » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

camillomiller wrote: post #31

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.

I still don't think it will happen. Worst case scenario, someone's gonna make a very nice deal when buying them. What alarms me is the amount of Teslas, Mercedes-AMG M models and other kind of extremely expensive cars parked in their parking lots and in the area surrounding their HQ here in Berlin. In the last one and a half year I've witnessed such a crescendo of the car show-off level that's I'm worried about their…

Is that the actual paycheck, or the company expenses on salaries? I'm not an expert on German finances, but I would expect the actual paycheck to be only about 50% of total employer expenses.

And then the state takes about 40% of the actual paycheck in taxes and social payments. Teslas and Mercedeses are not the car of the file-and-rank employees if that ~80k was the full company expense per employee.

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

#62

Post by gryzzly » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

camillomiller wrote: post #31

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.

I still don't think it will happen. Worst case scenario, someone's gonna make a very nice deal when buying them. What alarms me is the amount of Teslas, Mercedes-AMG M models and other kind of extremely expensive cars parked in their parking lots and in the area surrounding their HQ here in Berlin. In the last one and a half year I've witnessed such a crescendo of the car show-off level that's I'm worried about their…

You can't even consider buying a car like that with 80k in Berlin, after tax and insurances it becomes ~40k and if you got an expat family and possibly kids that’s enough for owning a bicycle and an OK flat and feeding your family. The offices are rented from an incubator with ties to the gov that has space in the building (and come to have meetings there with their expensive cars).

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

#63

Post by pidg » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

nbzklr wrote: post #51

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…

Reposts? They are currently my #1 annoyance on soundcloud. I'm following 300+ artists and they increased my stream's size by at least 4x. It's not about "finding, sharing and curating" but to spam your stream with duplicate tracks. Imagine an artist reposting his own tracks. Then his network does. As does his label. And his friend. And then all of them repost a playlist with this track on it. Yay! Please give us an o…

Exactly. And those creating content are the ones who fork out for a paid account. It wasn't designed for 'curators' because they add nothing but noise to the ecosystem.

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

#64

Post by staticelf » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

Majestic121 wrote: post #21

Theodores wrote: post #8

Soundcloud has not done 'peak mySpace' yet: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=soundcloud&geo=US All seems on the up in terms of interest from people using the search engine. Very enviable curve.

It seems it has reached a peak, or at least has not been really growing in 2015, if you check worldwide https://www.google.com/trends/explore#geo&q=soundcloud

You mean the US isn't the same as worldwide?

Joke aside, it is a great place to find free music. I am not surprised that it is more popular in countries I would assume does not have the same availability of streaming services.

Since I'm from Sweden I've been living the life with Spotify and similar services for years but still I've found myself go to SoundCloud to find the music which I cannot find on Spotify.

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

#65

Post by distances » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

_ak wrote: post #37

> While SoundCloud brought in €17.35m ($15.37m) in 2014, it lost a total of €39.14m ($44.19m). Employee wages during that period also increased 42.5% to €17.9m, meaning that the average wage per employee for that year totalled €79,980. Wow, that is ridiculously high, especially so for Berlin.

Perhaps this was the total employee cost for the company, and not the actual pay check the employee herself sees? Then this would be about within expectations.

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

#66

Post by adriand » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

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…

I absolutely love Soundcloud and also use it daily - I am listening to it right now - but it's an absolute disgrace how little they've done to improve the platform. It seems like such a total waste of potential.

The issues with the UI/UX are obvious and there are clear ways to improve on the situation. A number of people have done unsolicited Soundcloud redesigns, but there was an excellent one in December 2014 that is worth taking a look at:

https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-technology/redesig...

In addition to showcasing a beautiful, thoughtful redesign, this post makes a series of criticisms that are both justified and still in urgent need of rectification. For example, in the stream:

* It’s hard to discern which song is playing.

* Only three to five songs are visible at once.

* The Stream doesn’t automatically scroll.

* The avatars [of commenters] on the waveform are virtually meaningless.

* Reloading the Stream is slow and clunky.

I would really hate to lose Soundcloud, as a long time fan of electronic music (going on 20 years now!) it's been a big part of my life for years now and I love it.

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

#67

Post by thirdsun » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

nbzklr wrote: post #51

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…

Reposts? They are currently my #1 annoyance on soundcloud. I'm following 300+ artists and they increased my stream's size by at least 4x. It's not about "finding, sharing and curating" but to spam your stream with duplicate tracks. Imagine an artist reposting his own tracks. Then his network does. As does his label. And his friend. And then all of them repost a playlist with this track on it. Yay! Please give us an o…

Agreed, and the solution is painfully obvious: Show the item once in the feed and just let me know that "DJ Joe Doe, Awesome Records, [guy who is in my network] and 27 other people reposted this."

Come to think about it, isn't that how most other social feeds handle this problem?

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

#68

Post by EGreg » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

I don't say this about many start ups, but sound cloud has created an amazing experience and interface for publishing sound. I don't know how defendable it is, but they are one of those start ups that definitely needs more capital before they build out their revenue streams. And I think they are going to get it.

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

#69

Post by 4ndr3vv » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

npalli wrote: post #38

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".

The auditor has clearly stated that it has doubts about the company as a 'going concern'. This is a technical term in auditing that implies the auditor has doubts that the company will survive (i.e, will have to liquidate) another twelve months. It's not a willy nilly "growing company is losing money" type statement, it means there is a fundamental problem in how the company is financed and operated. https://en.wikip…

I think you've misinterpreted this

From your link: "This accounting principle assumes that, a company will continue to exist long enough to carry out its objectives and commitments and will not liquidate in the foreseeable future."

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

#70

Post by zekevermillion » Thu, Feb 11, 2016, 2:40 PM UTC

x1024 wrote: post #44

zekevermillion wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. The article could just as well be written about any other successful high-growth company. Continued survival will require further capital investment...no sh@*t! Obviously the author is just trolling for views. If SC announces another round, and then turns a profit in 3 years, someone will write another article about their "amazing turnaround".

Just like how we're now writing about Twitter's 'amazing turnaround' after only 10 years of losing money. Oh, wait...

Twitter is a public company now, not a high-growth company. It's quite fair to criticize Twitter, or Zynga, for selling to the public at an inflated price based on hype -- after which their respective stock prices have languished. Keep in mind that there has been plenty of criticism of twitter from the very beginning, all while they went from being worth zero to $20 billion. The point is, criticizing a high-growth, privately-backed company like SoundCloud for losing money only makes sense if you want to criticize the entire model of venture-backed entrepreneurship.