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

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

#331

Post by zanny » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:07 AM UTC

mst wrote: post #269

babuskov wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're suggesting that SoundCloud seeds all the files instead of offering the download option. Perhaps this could work if "play-in-browser" vs "download" ratio is not too big.

And play in browser could be handled by something like torrent time, no?

More like webtorrent[1]

I haven't actually kept up to date recently on the project, but the ML is super active. I believe they now have a working localforage backend to store torrents - the implementation already works flawlessly, and there is a hybrid client in the same node package family that can seed the same files to both webtorrent cleints and traditional UDP clients.

But it is extensionless and seamless and just uses webrtc data channels and websockets.

[1]:https://github.com/feross/webtorrent

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

#332

Post by zanny » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:09 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #215

colechristensen wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. There are a collection of private trackers run by motivated volunteers and paid for with meager donations which have collections far superior to the best paid services or archives anywhere or at any time in history. They do this by erecting and maintaining virtual economies where what you can get is limited by how much you've shared.

That's true, but private trackers have centralized costs and are often funded by donations or paid perks.

You don't really need 100% uptime trackers, DHT lets you do peer to peer file discovery. There are trackerless torrents, the only problem being how you get the torrents in the first place, but all that takes is a magnet URI from the original uploader / creator somewhere.

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

#333

Post by stephentmcm » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:16 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #320

stephentmcm wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with web content most of this content is likely still somewhere . While you and I have no access too it someone does, whether they'll share it with us is another thing all together.

That's not necessarily true. Some of it is preserved by the internet archive, but a lot falls through the cracks. Maybe you mean it's still on someone's home computer. But hard drives fail over time. So do CDs, floppy disks, and flash drives. Over time all this stuff will be lost unless someone makes an effort to preserve it.

I'm referring mainly to the authors of these works likely having something lying on a hard drive sitting on a shelf or backed up on 'C: Back up 2012-06-21 4 of 7'. These are much like those piles of old letters found in Grandma's attic, mostly unintelligible (I certainly can't read the cursive scrawls) but still ultimately not 'lost' if someone is prepared to spend the time recovering them.

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

#334

Post by ahi » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 4:26 AM UTC

aback wrote: post #110

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…

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…

HathiTrust.org, 13-14 million volumes has less than 20 FTEs and the vast majority of them are on new development projects. Put into maintenance it might take 2 FT sysadmins to keep going. Maybe double the cost for operations. Preservation and digital distribution is really really cheap. SoundCloud isn't losing $44 million on sysadmins, servers and network. It's all the other startup crap, sales, bizdev, legal that is doing them in.

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

#335

Post by coldtea » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

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.

Would it be really? Most of it wasn't even heard by more than 200 people in the first place.

For something to be a "tremendous cultural loss" it should not just a cultural artifact, it should also have had cultural impact (mass appreciation or influence) to begin with.

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

#336

Post by odiroot » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 6:08 AM UTC

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)

The word on the streets is that this number is going to drop soon.

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

#337

Post by camillomiller » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 9:37 AM UTC

herval wrote: post #296

camillomiller wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not, I'm not talking about 200 Teslas parked outside. My reasoning was more or less this: devs, general low level employees, IT technician - they're not paid that much. They would probably be the low end of the pool of salaries. To rise the average so much it would take some good amount of overpayment for upper management and executives. All for a company that doesn't make money. Hence the observation about…

AFAIK the two Teslas frequently seen around the Factory belong to the same guy (one of the founders of the Factory). There's not that many execs at the Soundcloud office as well, from what I reckon. Also: there's multiple companies in the building complex (including a bunch of seats on the coworking space reserved for offsites from executives from Lufthansa and some other giants)

That would explain the high concentration of super cars, then, but It was at least 4 teslas, 2 blue ones, one in red, one in white. Source: I lived in the area for 7 months last year

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

#338

Post by bborud » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 10:10 AM UTC

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…

I'd like to offer a contrary perspective. I actually like the idea that some of our "stuff" ends up being ephemeral. By accident or design. I'm not really talking about burning the occasional Alexandrian Library, but the stuff that didn't seem important enough for anyone to really care about.

And if something I made only exists on Soundcloud, I either don't really care or I'm a bit stupid.

For most of our history nearly everything we thought, said and did was ephemeral. Not recorded and then gone. We've become pack-rats. We're at the beginning of technology civilization and already we have amassed so much that for any major genre of music there exists more content than a human being could consume in a lifetime.

And the vast majority of it is, at best, unremarkable.

I think we are wired for worrying about losing information because it used to be a disaster. We used to be terrible at recording information. We're not anymore. Oh boy are we not. We'll just make more. Or we'll repeat whatever process brought us there.

And if it can't be repeated you now have the rarest and most unique gift: a cultural experience that only exists in the memory of those present.

Imagine the storage space we as a civilization are going to use for storing worthless shit just in the next 100 years.

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

#339

Post by alias240 » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 11:30 AM UTC

mark242 wrote: post #201

My obligatory show HN link: https://octave.is is the Vimeo to Soundcloud's Youtube. No crap comments, no ads, no garbage on your artist page.

It looks nice. Good luck with it. As with all audio hosting services, after a moderate amount of success you will surely find yourself on the radar of the anti-piracy agencies. I hope you are well prepared and can overcome this challenge.

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

#340

Post by squeaky-clean » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 3:18 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #292

squeaky-clean wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally want it to go back to (or more likely at this point, find a new website dedicated to) being a community for people who make music. It's now more about listening to music together, or broadcasting to an audience, than sharing music creation. I miss the Friday nights spent working on music in Ableton, rendering a clip and posting to soundcloud, then commenting/giving feedback to friends who had just done t…

You sound like a target audience for Blend.io. I don't use the site anymore but you might find it neat.

Thanks for telling me about this, I'm going to give it a try! Now the tough part will be getting my other friends to try it out as well as the same time.