SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#1

Post by janober » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:15 PM UTC

SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
techcrunch.com

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#2

Post by janober » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

Very sorry to hear! Apparently additionally also the engineers in New York: https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#3

Post by untog » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:34 PM UTC

Awful news. But I'm glad to see that it's part of an attempt to stay independent - I hope Soundcloud sticks around, in control of its own destiny, for a long time.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#4

Post by mintplant » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:36 PM UTC

> Some rough news today for SoundCloud, the audio streaming site whose content is largely based around uploads from its 175 million users in 190 countries.

Does SoundCloud see itself as an audio streaming service now, as opposed to an audio hosting service? That seems like a focus shift away from where they started, and puts them up against behemoths like Spotify. Maybe that's related to why they're struggling.

Tangentially: does anyone have any idea of how Bandcamp is doing?

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#5

Post by doublerebel » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

It's been a downhill trend ever since trending likes were replaced by reposts. Trending likes actually showed which tunes my friends found most interesting. Reposts allowed a single user to spam a feed with their personal taste. Then repost bots were allowed to require repost to unlock a free download and now discovery on SoundCloud is almost dead. My friends who are successful producers but refuse to play the bot and pay-for-repost game are completely drowned in the noise.

My bet is that since trending likes are a Graph DB problem, SoundCloud just chose not to solve it once it became too hard on their database. They famously had issues with early Mongo adoption so this would fit right in. Their most recent frontend HTML5 rewrite always winds up my CPU and hasn't changed in a couple years.

SoundCloud to me has always been a great idea with some great design that got ruined by some poor engineering choices from the top. And at the end by a desperate grab for stats and cash. I think producers would have paid more, better subsidizing free plans, if discovery hadn't gone downhill. I ran the numbers once on how CDbaby and Bandcamp became successful (based on stats trickled out over the years) while SoundCloud could never turn a profit. There's still plenty of room for someone to do this right.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#6

Post by tyingq » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

Other sources say total employees are 420, so it's roughly a 40% cut. Ouch.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#7

Post by draw_down » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

doublerebel wrote: post #5

It's been a downhill trend ever since trending likes were replaced by reposts. Trending likes actually showed which tunes my friends found most interesting. Reposts allowed a single user to spam a feed with their personal taste. Then repost bots were allowed to require repost to unlock a free download and now discovery on SoundCloud is almost dead. My friends who are successful producers but refuse to play the bot an…

I haven't been using it long enough to have an opinion, but I did notice that the hosts of podcasts I enjoy would repost when they guested on another podcast, which I otherwise would not have noticed, and did appreciate.

I only use it for podcasts though, never music.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#8

Post by strictnein » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:41 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #3

Awful news. But I'm glad to see that it's part of an attempt to stay independent - I hope Soundcloud sticks around, in control of its own destiny, for a long time.

Well, I mean, they're independent because no one was willing to buy them. Spotify and Google passed.

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/google-mulling-soundc...

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#9

Post by pmoriarty » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:43 PM UTC

For me as a music producer and consumer, one of the most frustrating changes recently made my Soundcloud has been their cancellation of groups, which used to be a decent means of discovering new music related to kinds of music you already like.

Once groups were cancelled, the listens on the songs I post to Soundcloud plummeted to virtually nothing, and I really don't bother to upload my music there anymore, nor to go to Soundcloud to discover new music.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#10

Post by cookiecaper » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 4:43 PM UTC

mintplant wrote: post #4

> Some rough news today for SoundCloud, the audio streaming site whose content is largely based around uploads from its 175 million users in 190 countries. Does SoundCloud see itself as an audio streaming service now, as opposed to an audio hosting service? That seems like a focus shift away from where they started, and puts them up against behemoths like Spotify. Maybe that's related to why they're struggling. Tange…

File hosting is just not a profitable enterprise. This pattern should be familiar by now: gain prominence by giving away tons of stuff to draw in users, and then clamp down when the bill comes due, resulting in a hard pivot that alienates the users.

The truth is that users are not loyal. If you are offering something for free, they will be happy to take it, and they will have no qualms about moving on when you stop giving them the free stuff that they came for. Selling eyeballs is a very tough business. People who want a realistic chance to make money should have plans besides "sell ads".