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SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses

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

#111

Post by pbhjpbhj »

CydeWeys wrote: post #100
thirdsun wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Facebook has been doing this for years and it works great. The duplicated content is shown once, and then the separate comment feeds from the different reposts (if there are any) are put below it. Soundcloud wouldn't even have to innovate here; they just need to copy what's already working elsewhere.

Perhaps they found the duplication better for revenue?

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

#112

Post by asabjorn »

As a music consumer I personally want to pay for soundcloud instead of getting ads, which could bring more revenue than ads and be more flexible in prizing, but when I asked soundcloud support for the option they said they had no immediate plans for one. In the end money is king and I don't understand why they haven't explored more revenue options.

Edit: typo

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

#113

Post by strgrd »

nbzklr wrote: post #97
strgrd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow 2,000 on soundcloud and wish I could follow more (there is a limit currently). I agree that the way reposts are shared on timelines is annoying in the sense that it is inadequate. Obviously the user needs the ability to filter reposts and just see tracks posted by artists (not currently possible). But I also follow people because I know they repost quality content from obscure artists. That's the main way to…

How do you manage that? It takes me ~1h to listen trough all of the tracks posted on one day. And I'm not even listening the full length.

Keep in mind I am primarily interested in DJ-oriented music, which is not music designed to be listened to beginning-to-end, but rather mixed and beat-matched with other music. You can often get the gist of a beat and rhythm in a matter of bars. I'll usually click around a track for 5-10s before I repost it, and move on to the next track. When I'm ready to actually listen, I go back to my profile and play back everything I've reposted for the day, and unpost the stuff that doesn't stand for the full length of the track.

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

#114

Post by ngcazz »

mtalantikite wrote: post #89

Not being able to save tracks for offline use on mobile has been bothering me for a while. Maybe I'm an edge case, but I do a lot of listening while commuting, which means no Internet on the subway here in NYC. That means SoundCloud isn't even an option for me unless I'm at my desk. Also, I can't save a collection of favorite tracks in any meaningful way. I can favorite them, but they quickly get lost in the mobile U…

They "broke" that in the mobile app. It used to be that it would cache the stuff you had listened to (very useful in London where there is no network signal in the tube), but now it seems you always have to be online to listen.

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

#115

Post by killa_kyle »

mtalantikite wrote: post #89

Not being able to save tracks for offline use on mobile has been bothering me for a while. Maybe I'm an edge case, but I do a lot of listening while commuting, which means no Internet on the subway here in NYC. That means SoundCloud isn't even an option for me unless I'm at my desk. Also, I can't save a collection of favorite tracks in any meaningful way. I can favorite them, but they quickly get lost in the mobile U…

-Also, I can't save a collection of favorite tracks in any meaningful way. I can favorite them, but they quickly get lost in the mobile UI if I do too much of that. I end up relying on global search every time I want to revisit a song or artist.

You can use playlists to save collections of tracks

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

#116

Post by aback »

anotheryou wrote: post #29

What do 200 people do in such a company? (serious question, I just wonder how the workforce is usually distributed for a single online product of that size)

Those who have to account for their productivity (like devs) are probably in short supply.

Those who do not have to account for their productivity (like managers, accountants, and marketers) are probably in excess.

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

#117

Post by romaniv »

I would be happy to pay something to Soundcloud as long as it's not per-song. It's a good service. Really easy to use as a musician and great for finding new music as a consumer.

Hm, maybe they should be selling some "audiophile" subscriptions with ability to tag and hierarchically categorize songs you liked? I would buy that if the price is not astronomical.

But I also think it's really important that the basic usage stays free for people who randomly wonder in from other websites.

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

#118

Post by strgrd »

cmyr wrote: post #103

Soundcloud is absolutely ubiquitous in the electronic music community. I was talking about this with a friend recently who is a programmer and a (relatively) well known composer, and she made the point that soundcloud actually represents a very important cultural document; there is tons of music that has been created in the past 5+ years that exists exclusively there, and it would be a tremendous cultural loss if it…

We are living in the age of data impermanence. There is no mechanism to archive all of the content we are generating efficiently. Soundcloud represents but one of the many websites whose content will be lost forever to the digital dark ages.

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

#119

Post by zekevermillion »

x1024 wrote: post #94
zekevermillion wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, p…

Yes, that's what we want to criticize.

OK, but that wasn't the gist of the article. The article was only about one company as if the author is unaware of how VC works, for better or worse.

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

#120

Post by koore »

tudorizer wrote: post #104
cmyr wrote: post #103

Soundcloud is absolutely ubiquitous in the electronic music community. I was talking about this with a friend recently who is a programmer and a (relatively) well known composer, and she made the point that soundcloud actually represents a very important cultural document; there is tons of music that has been created in the past 5+ years that exists exclusively there, and it would be a tremendous cultural loss if it…

Are any of your friends paying for SoundCloud?

I pay for it and I'm not a pro. I really only paid because I wanted the spotlight feature and I also felt that I used the site so much it would be prudent to throw them some funds. Like most I have been thoroughly disappointed with the lack of upgrades to the site but so much good content is there that it's hard to walk away from it.
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