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SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
121–130 of 348 posts
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#122Article 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.
Do they have public accounts? I can't understand what SoundCloud could spend $60M USD on? Apparently they have over 300 employees, what do they do all day? Clearly I don't understand their operation.
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't startups usually corporations ab initio ?
Well, they shouldn't gain the bloated-ness of a 40yo bureaucratic corporation that fast, though? At least, that's what all the theories about the way startups should operate are about...
Perhaps it's a variation on Parkinson's Law [1]? "The amount of bloat/bureacracy expands so as to fill the budget available to the company?"
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#124Soundcloud 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…
As a counter-point though, the role of SoundCloud in a diversified music commerce portfolio is not ideal as a catch-all archive. A professional elsewhere mentioned it is a useful tool for sharing and A/B/C listening tests with tracks set to private, but that's not the end use-case scenario. In principle, SoundCloud should not be the sole - or even main - distribution channel for a music act.
To put it another way, SoundCloud at its core is a free streaming site, and it also allows free downloads if enabled by the music act. There is no way I know of to set up SoundCloud for paid downloads or streams. Thus, using Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Tidal, Google, Deezr (etc) are wise to capture a modest revenue stream and listener data in ways SoundCloud simply doesn't support.
SoundCloud a lot more like Facebook than it is iTunes: socially important, great for sharing, a way for something to go viral - all important angles in modern business, sure. Is it such a monolith that I'm worried about its future? Not really; it'd be sad to watch it crumble (further, in some respects) but that doesn't seem likely for at least a couple more years. Lots can change.
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#125Soundcloud 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…
when people argue that "digital distribution is essentially free," then ask why Soundcloud is losing money, since distributing music is literally their only real cost of doing business. we will continue to endure substantial cultural losses for so long as people continue to believe that content can & should be distributed and consumed for free. ultimately some sort of micropayments + blockchain-like-cloudserving migh…
If you used something like ipfs, syncthing, or generic torrents you could easily distribute anything you want at large scale at no cost, as long as people were interested in having it.
If you choose to centralize distribution on one web server that is your own choice, but the better phrase is "digital distribution is free if you want it to be".
I doubt we will see a return to pay-to-listen models in music. Reality has taken too big of a bite around the copyright extortion ring surrounding sine waves. The future of music is in patronage, merchandising, and live performances - which really, it has always been. Only extremely rare unicorn performers ever have the stars align to be able to monetize their music itself (in the past it was making it big with a label, today last decade it was topping itunes) while we are seeing the rise of music as a viable profession without extraordinary fame as long as you can provide a niche and be good at it, you can attract enough whale fans to support you regardless of if the tracks themselves are free - your real audience is those that not only want what you already made, but want you to continue to make.
Remember, as in all things IP, it is not the actual music file that is scarce or expensive to produce, it is the idea behind the music that took an artist hours or days to hand craft into a digital creation. The first iteration was the expensive one - all other ones are effectively free. It is essential that going forward we culturally recognize the distinction and move to seek sustainable business models around the former rather than the later, which we only invented as an imperfect way to translate ideas into the physical goods market back when they were less distinct than they are now (ie, costs of distribution did exist for paper books, so pigeonholing writing into markets via copyright was a reasonable train of thought when per-unit costs still existed and thus people could not effortlessly propagate the information on an individual basis).
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
Do you have backups of your tracks into case Soundcloud goes away? EDIT: Its on my to do list to write a pipeline for Soundcloud for Archive Team this weekend. Just in case. That doesn't pickup private tracks though. Backup your stuff!!
At my company we have a bunch of content that's only archived on SoundCloud. The main barrier I've had to backing up original uploads (only available through the web interface) is the terrible reliability of all the AJAX calls. Even with browser automation, it requires a LOT of error-handling just to navigate between resources successfully.
It seems that all these microservices[1] are there for the sake of blogging about using microservices[2] as there haven't been any new significant new features delivered in years, and the whole application now seems to be delivered through AJAX calls.
[1]: https://developers.soundcloud.com/blog/building-products-at-... [2]: http://philcalcado.com/2015/09/08/how_we_ended_up_with_micro...
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
Do you have backups of your tracks into case Soundcloud goes away? EDIT: Its on my to do list to write a pipeline for Soundcloud for Archive Team this weekend. Just in case. That doesn't pickup private tracks though. Backup your stuff!!
Yes I have all the originals on my music computer, plus do regular backups of all my music projects to my dedicated server.
I'm not afraid to loose what I created. 8 years ago, I lost 200 tracks. When I realized it, I decided consciously to make it a good experience, no grief at all.
I found it to be a formidable opportunity to start fresh, change my process, change my habits and create more!
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If we listen to you, it would seem that SC is both blameless, and - in fact - not in trouble at all.
And that's all fine and well. It sounds plausible. But it seems like every company is "blameless, and things are actually going peachy... but we still need more funding". And at that point the whole thing starts to become unraveled.
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially given that good talent here in Berlin is much much cheaper. 80k/year scores you some superstar devs, while that's probably the peanuts some out-of-school pre-puberal intern would earn at a Valley startup. What's really expensive here is management people and the way German hire the mid-level management is broken most of the time. I don't know if it's a German thing or a global corporate thing, but I've per…
80k/year probably includes the 28-ish% "Lohnnebenkosten" (incidental wage costs) So the actual paycheck would be around 60k. I think that's pretty ok for Berlin? Having worked in both, Germany and Silicon Valley, I'd say that the middle management hiring is certainly a bigger problem in Germany than I've seen on either the east or west coast in the US.
No, it is around 70k/year pre-tax. Note that social sec payments are capped and Arbeitgeberanteil is smaller.
http://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gehaltsrechner-a...
Re: SoundCloud could be forced to close after $44m losses
#130Soundcloud 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…
when people argue that "digital distribution is essentially free," then ask why Soundcloud is losing money, since distributing music is literally their only real cost of doing business. we will continue to endure substantial cultural losses for so long as people continue to believe that content can & should be distributed and consumed for free. ultimately some sort of micropayments + blockchain-like-cloudserving migh…
The problem is that some people pay $10 a month for Spotify and others pay for services like Apple Music or Tidal.
The question is how this income is split between the services (which deservedly should be profitable) and the musicians.
Art has always had a shady connection to commerce in which the gatekeepers tend to profit more than the artists themselves.