SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service • Hacker News Board

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#71

Post by snickmy » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

ihsw wrote: post #31

owenwil wrote: post #29

While I like SoundCloud a lot, what the hell have they been up to for the last few years? From where I'm sitting Spotify, Apple Music and many more out-innovated them and SoundCloud did... well, nothing.

Just want to throw Google Play Music into the mix (pun intended!) as I have been using it exclusively for the past few months. It is excellent and I cannot recommend it enough, and it is available in Canada (unlike SoundCloud Go).

Google Play Music deserve a honor spot.

they have the best recommendation system in place (radios) and curated playlist (songza acquisition).

Unfortunately is a great example that is not always a matter of quality, but more a matter of trend and hype. I'm sure SoundCloud Go will be available in Canada soon.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#72

Post by snickmy » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #50

aiw1nters wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as the article states they were trying to score deals around content derivatives (e.g remixes, dj sets) that never existed before. I wouldn't underestimate that!

Another article over on Billboard points out that Apple Music and Dubset just announced a system for remixes and DJ sets that actually pays the remixer and DJ a portion of funds while also compensating the original content owners, and about a week before this SoundCloud announcement. I know about it because I'm already signed up and have an account. SoundCloud has provided nothing in the way of notification, tools, o…

What scares me the most is the bureaucracy that apple has in place. It takes about 8 weeks to get a content live in Apple music. No matter what sort of content.

On Soundcloud it takes about 8 seconds (well maybe 8 minutes if you have a slow connection). Also, with 175M users, vs the 30M of Apple, and over 7 years of exclusive content, I don't see Apple getting ahead too fast.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#73

Post by snickmy » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

toastking wrote: post #6

$12 a month seems a little steep. Especially when compared to Apple Music and Spotify.

It's 12$ for iOS users, due to Apple cut of 30%. for all the other platforms is 9.9$.

for once I welcome this disparity, is a good thing that the users knows the real cost of picking a platform/phone.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#74

Post by Raphmedia » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:32 PM UTC

geostyx wrote: post #39

k-mcgrady wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "The actual offering left aside, the naming is quite unfortunate." It seems good to me. One of the major features is offline listening to you can now listen 'on the go'. Am I missing something?

HBO Go Go (golang) Go (game)

Pokemon Go

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#75

Post by k-mcgrady » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

snickmy wrote: post #69

k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

>> "Eventually, everyone from DJs to podcasters will be able to monetize the same way, though the system is invite-only for now." I'm not holding my breath. Overtime SoundCloud releases something cool it's only available to people they invite and never seems to become available to everyone. On top of that I just tried to signup for Go - not available in my country (UK) so I'm guessing, as usual, US only. Pretty sucky…

I can't remember any service in the music industry that started from day one World Wide. Licensing in music is one of the most f kup situation ever. Compared to that, the Tech patent battle is nothing. I do expect a constant roll out of new countries, but starting from US (which is the larger audience as today) does make sense to me.

>> "I can't remember any service in the music industry that started from day one World Wide."

I believe Apple music covered quite a lot of countries. I think at least some part of the service hit nearly all of them. I'm fine with launching in one country but at least give a timeline and for one of Europe's leading startups to launch a product US only is a bit of a kick in the teeth. I understand it but it just feels bad.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#76

Post by snickmy » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

hnexamazon wrote: post #52

I am a long-time user of Soundcloud that has recently stepped back from the service. As an EDM enthusiast, the service is the best place for finding up-and-coming talent and great remixes that you can't find anywhere else. The killer feature is the personal stream. Once you've started following a large enough pool of artists and labels, there is no better mechanism for wading through the pool of mediocrity to search…

This is a great analysis.

I would separate it in two categories.

1) the bad UX when having a big library 2) the 3rd party developer experience.

Starting from 2) I'd say SoundCloud has been fairly open in their early stage, and a lot more conservative later on. I'm not sure what's the direction they are going to take in the future. If I was running SoundCloud, I'd keep the API as a playground, not for production use, and I'd try to fix the major issue in my product instead of leaving room for someone else to crack that business.

Regarding 1) you are absolutely right. It boils down to 3 major areas of the product: classification, recommendation and search. Big players are working on that, but they are all implementing some sort of social driven collaborative filter (which is sad, if we think about how personal is the listening experience). Soundcloud should try to have a more hybrid approach introducing some more advance machine learning neural network technique to get rid of the 'cold start' effect and have a better targeting of the 'long tail' of their 125m tracks. Once they have the 'data' layer done, they should complement with a product UX experience, including curated playlists, radios, personal automatic generated playlist, and an overall better UX experience for the user-listener segment of their audience.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#77

Post by sjburt » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

f_allwein wrote: post #8

why doesn't any music service come up with a less expensive price plan? I would like to try one, but am pretty sure I would not use it so much as to justify paying 10$ (or £) per month. How about a less expensive plan with limited features (e.g. only n hours of music per month)?

The real reason is the deals they have with the record labels. There's only 4 record labels, plus a block of indies that make a 5th, and they don't have any interest in picking a winner between the services, so everyone basically pays the same price.

The actual deals are quite complex, but under the pricing model that is most advantageous to the streaming service it basically comes down to the labels get about $6.50 a month per subscriber, and then a cut above that. So that's a hard floor, and with the cut and other costs it's hard to make a business on anything less than $10/month. And obviously you can't go above $10.

This is also why everyone charges more for Apple customers, if they gave 30% to Apple, there would be no revenue at all.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#78

Post by 6stringmerc » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:40 PM UTC

snickmy wrote: post #72

6stringmerc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another article over on Billboard points out that Apple Music and Dubset just announced a system for remixes and DJ sets that actually pays the remixer and DJ a portion of funds while also compensating the original content owners, and about a week before this SoundCloud announcement. I know about it because I'm already signed up and have an account. SoundCloud has provided nothing in the way of notification, tools, o…

What scares me the most is the bureaucracy that apple has in place. It takes about 8 weeks to get a content live in Apple music. No matter what sort of content. On Soundcloud it takes about 8 seconds (well maybe 8 minutes if you have a slow connection). Also, with 175M users, vs the 30M of Apple, and over 7 years of exclusive content, I don't see Apple getting ahead too fast.

Well I know Apple has that turnaround potential - up to 16 days I think is the wording - but I've had very good success with 24-48 hour turnaround time on most of my material. I'd have to double check, but your point is a good one. Spotify, Amazon, Tidal, Google, YouTube all have the content up within 24 hours, and some even quicker it seems. If the lag is a bit of an inconvenience I understand, but I find the results worthwhile in my use case.

If SoundCloud does essentially 'legitimize' the remix and DJ set market and corners it, with revenue, I think the music industry will be pretty happy with that outcome. As a customer/content creator I do like competition, even if it means managing more outlets.

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#79

Post by snickmy » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:43 PM UTC

JonFish85 wrote: post #61

Taking on Spotify seems like an odd choice to me. To me it would seem that Spotify has a huge fight ahead of it, even though it has raised well over a billion dollars at this point. They're fighting against the platforms that already exist: Apple Music & Google Play. Apple Music offers basically the same thing except with tighter integration with their hardware (and iTunes for buying the songs that artists don't allo…

The thing that differentiate Soundcloud from all the competitors you are mentioning is the social network that it's build on. Hence the size of the catalog that is by far (3.5x) bigger.

In other words, if you want to find something completely exclusive and never heard before, Soundcloud is the place to go. If that content is good quality or not, is another topic :)

Re: SoundCloud launches Go: a subscription service

#80

Post by 6stringmerc » Tue, Mar 29, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

snickmy wrote: post #68

6stringmerc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah it seems like Dubset and Apple almost forced SoundCloud's hand - I'm already signed up to that collaborative service (Mixbank) and it looks very, very well put together. SoundCloud's reputation hasn't been the greatest lately from the user/producer experience so I'm with you that their 'open-ness' is suspect.

I doubt Apple forced anything. Soundcloud has been working on this for literally 18 months. the only thing holding on was the Sony deal. Dubset is doing a great job product wise. Really well done, unfortunately they coverage of licensing is really limited. They sort of jumped ahead and sold the platform before closing at least 50% of the deals (see for instance completely absence of the Merlin catalog). Soundcloud ha…

Fair counter and I was being a bit more tongue in cheek, sorry about that if it came off as sort of ignorant. I agree these deals are massive to construct, and the back-end has to be really interesting from a tech / rights standpoint. It has been, without a doubt, one of the biggest riddles for the instiutional players (re: rights & revenue). Again, sort of trying to be joking about the subject, but I bet it's a lot easier for SoundCloud to get 100% cooperation with major labels/societies by catering exclusively to them, and basically ignoring any potential compensation for the independent content creators (however minor it might be) - yeah I'm kind of slighting Merlin for only capturing its market, because I think there's probably a single digit percentage of content creators unaffiliated...not much, I know...

It just kind of feels bitter, like SoundCloud built their honest business on original content (not mashups), and then really is pivoting to the major monied players and hand-waving off the rest. If it's true I can understand it business wise, I can. I just...well, don't particularly like it on a personal level.