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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

#181

Post by zimpenfish »

bonniemuffin wrote: post #154
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…

I'd love to pay Soundcloud actual money for the ability to cache songs for offline listening in the mobile app! This would be a killer feature for a listener-focused subscription tier.

I'd love to have offline copies of just -my own stuff-, never mind anyone else's.

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

#182

Post by vox_mollis »

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 story is larger than soundcloud.

This is data point #8794390820385 that the bubble has been pricked.

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

#184

Post by dustingetz »

strgrd wrote: post #118
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.

When programming with immutability becomes ubiquitous, this problem will be solved. Immutable systems enable permanent & idealized caching at all layers. This is more of a research topic now but is where we are headed in 10 year timeframe i think.

Anyway, who cares. What about the last ten thousand years of content that nobody gives a shit about.

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

#185

Post by sosborn »

taylorwc wrote: post #146
TheLogothete wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soundcloud is almost 10 years old. At what point a company stops being a startup? At what point it stops being feasible for a company to operate at a loss?

Are these meant to be rhetorical? You decide when you're going to stop calling it a startup. They are venture-backed and founded within the past decade. I'm going to call them a startup. As for question number two, I'll let you count how many publicly-traded companies aren't profitable that have been around for decades. I didn't register an opinion on whether SoundCloud should or shouldn't be profitable, I merely sai…

There is operating at a loss because you are reinvesting (see: Amazon) and there is operating at a loss because your business isn't viable. Soundcloud is somewhere in between those two extremes.

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

#186

Post by wrecktangle »

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…

All of my weight behind it. SoundCloud was how Indie Music, the companion of the lonely programmer, took us all into the small bedroom corners of the struggling songwriter. The problem is obviously business model.

While not so straightforward, applying DJBooth.net's money-making viewpoint of non-intrusive angle ads or more creatively publishing short-span addictive games on the website Indie gamers can play while listening to Indie Music should start a path to a defining solution.

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

#187

Post by distances »

roel_v wrote: post #142
_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.

How is that 'ridiculously high'? That's say e4000/month after taxes (if total tax pressure is 40%). These costs also include e.g. the director's salaries, which I presume are more than 80k/year for a 10 year old company with 200 employees.

For developer positions in Berlin 4000 € after taxes would be a considerably high salary.

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

#188

Post by pmlnr »

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…

> it would be a tremendous cultural loss if it were to disappear

And that is why everyone keeps backups of their work on their personal sites, right?

http://indiewebcamp.com/

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

#189

Post by cJ0th »

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…

> 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 were to disappear.

I don't know. We would obviously loose a fragment of history but if those tracks were so important culturally then they would have been distributed more widely. For instance, pressed on CD or vinyl or utilized in a movie or pirated in some way.

While I do like soundcloud I don't get what's so special about it. My hunch is that it is not so much the website but the fact that the internet is mainstream these days. There were websites where artists could share their music and have a profile before Soundcloud. Just to name a few: Besonic, mp3.com, myownmusic ...

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

#190

Post by downandout »

Am I missing something? This report is from 2014. Despite the fact that "SoundCloud was heavily reliant on further capital investment to continue operating in 2015."....it did indeed raise money, made it through 2015, and is still operating in 2016.

It seems that this "report" is coming out now because stories about startup implosions get more clicks these days. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they are and have been losing money. That's why these companies raise such large rounds.

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