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

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

#341

Post by 6stringmerc » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #340

6stringmerc wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah it's a pretty neat system though using Dropbox and if anything it can give you some tips about sharing just on your own (Save All, Uploading in proper folders). There are lots of remix contests and the like if you feel up for a challenge.

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

#342

Post by norea-armozel » Fri, Feb 12, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

I think it would be a shame if SoundCloud disappeared considering how many of my music discoveries come from there. If it wasn't for SoundCloud I wouldn't have known Pilotpriest, Dance with the dead, Droid Bishop, and other synthwave artists even existed. Bandcamp is okay but I find it hard to find new synthwave and related genre artists on their search. If SoundCloud dies someone over at Bandcamp needs to beef up the search and tagging system over there (I buy much of my music now through BandCamp).

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

#343

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 12:38 AM UTC

jjn2009 wrote: post #302

exhilaration wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I had no idea this was possible.

All the files they host are just mp3 hosted in s3 with no encryption or authentication required. Its 128kbps which is disappointing but its no different from how it would sound streaming on the site.

They can be better than 128kbps, it depends on the quality you upload. But that's the artists choice and obviously if you want the best quality you should buy it. Also if you don't care about the quality but really like the song you should buy it :)

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

#344

Post by darksim905 » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 1:07 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #125

aback wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Pretty Lights seems to do well on their own.

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

#345

Post by aiw1nters » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 1:17 AM UTC

factmag talking financials is like Trump talking politics

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

#346

Post by throwawayaway » Sat, Feb 13, 2016, 8:33 AM UTC

untog wrote: post #297

throwawayaway wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree, torrents are a great solution for the most obscure stuff and very cheap. You just have to be the seed.

You just have to be the seed. So, you have to be the person with the content. Not useful if you find a torrent with 0 seeds.

Soundcloud & co require the content provider to upload the content too. If you want to share the content, provide the seed. If you don't want to share the content, don't upload to soundcloud, don't provide the seed.

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

#347

Post by cheese1756 » Mon, Feb 15, 2016, 7:10 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #125

aback wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

Spotify used to use a peer-to-peer architecture: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-bless...

I'd be interested in knowing why they switched away from it.

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

#348

Post by jjn2009 » Wed, Feb 17, 2016, 7:35 PM UTC

tripzilch wrote: post #343

jjn2009 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the files they host are just mp3 hosted in s3 with no encryption or authentication required. Its 128kbps which is disappointing but its no different from how it would sound streaming on the site.

They can be better than 128kbps, it depends on the quality you upload. But that's the artists choice and obviously if you want the best quality you should buy it. Also if you don't care about the quality but really like the song you should buy it :)

Do you know under what conditions the stream is higher than 128kbps? I've only done a small amount of digging around on their APIs and have not found anything but that.