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SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

techcrunch.com

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Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#11

Post by jameskegel »

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…

Bandcamp, Spotify, and Pandora are for the most part an afterthought to my social circle compared to SoundCloud. I'm genuinely surprised they aren't doing well; they have great engineers and have a fearless attitude that helped them reach a large audience quickly

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#12

Post by conradfr »

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…

Love using Bandcamp.

Apparently great[1] and profitable since 2012[2].

[1] https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/01/24/everything-is-terrific...

[2] http://5chicago.com/technology/bandcamp-profitable/

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#13

Post by doublerebel »

draw_down wrote: post #7
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.

Trending likes solved this, because even an upvote brigade required the user to have multiple friends in the brigade. All I had to do was follow a few key influencers on a topic and the post would show in my feed.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#17

Post by niftich »

I don't know how SoundCloud is managed and what their balance sheet looks like, but it's deeply unfortunate that a site that caters largely to up-and-coming musicians has so much trouble getting out of the red.

Presumably they're hurt by the presence of platforms such as Youtube or the 2010s' rebooted Myspace, where musicians can reach a larger audience and where both sides of the equation are subsidized by ads.

Meanwhile, more focused sites like Beatport appeared to have a successful recipe by selling actual tracks for download despite essentially offering unlimited streaming, yet even they ran into some trouble with their latest pivot.

It's a tough space to make money in, despite seemingly meeting a popular need.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#18

Post by jaclaz »

strictnein wrote: post #8
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...

Yes, from the content of the article it seems more like an attempt to just stay alive.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#20

Post by doublerebel »

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…

Yes, SoundCloud (IMO wrongfully) saw streaming services cut their market share (I believe it was actually product decisions.). So to get paid end user subscribers they offered streaming fully released albums and downloading them to play later.

This is completely at odds with securely streaming unreleased music, as a preview for the final album. They always have charged producers, and now are charging both sides for (in many cases) the same content.

This shifted their product focus and shafted producers who didn't have a major label deal that could afford the streaming SoundCloud partnership deal. Basically giving the finger to the early community that made them popular.

I would have focused on the producers and dissemination of their tracks that led to more and better discovery. I believe producers would pay a premium for that -- they already do with other forms of media delivery.

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