SoundCloud is one of Berlin's prime examples when it comes to it's startup credentials, so them stumbling is really hard to see for someone working in the city.
SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
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Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#32Soundcloud started dying when they decided to be more like Spotify and less like the independent music discovery service they started out as. Now they have an app and experience that is not particularly good at either.
Oddly enough, when I first heard of SoundCloud, it was in a completely different context from either. I first saw it used as a pastebin for voice recordings. Specifically, members of some online transgender communities use it to solicit community feedback on their voices. They'll record themselves talking, post it to SoundCloud, and ask the community for input on what they could do better. I don't think there's enoug…
Pastebin for voice recordings is basically what vocaroo.com is, and I discovered that in the same context you discovered SoundCloud. And also because popular use by 4chan.
When I first heard of SoundCloud it was mostly used by self-releasing EDM artists as a place to upload their music, before YouTube was a popular alternative. Nowadays I see a lot of artists buying visualizer templates and uploading their music with that - or sending it to an aggregator on YouTube who displays a certain style of music (many of these aggregators don't seek artist permission and just upload popular songs and such, but many of the ones I follow get things sent to them by indie artists because a channel with 60,000+ subs will beat their own personal channel for recognition).
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#33As somebody who listens to SoundCloud almost daily I really hope they can turn things around. They should completely ditch the free plan, and just have a $2.99 or $3.99 plan. I am actually signing up for SoundCloud Go+ (offline listening) now.
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#34Other sources say total employees are 420, so it's roughly a 40% cut. Ouch.
420 still seems like a rather unreasonably large number (to me) for something that is basically a file hosting service with a couple barely maintained mobile apps and a web site. Quite a few artists I follow are on Soundcloud primarily for new material. I would happily pay for Soundcloud if they'd bother to update their app for Android Auto and Android TV.
What's up with reductionist posts like this every time a company announces layoffs? Scaling out a global business takes a lot more work than it does to run a no-SLA side project. And you hire people to build out businesses that don't yet exist. When you've overreached, or targets are consistently not being met, you re-org, or, if that isn't possible, you scale back.
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#35I 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. Mean…
As soundcloud are a UK registered company you can actually see all their accounts/filings here https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06343600/filing-h...
looking at their accounts to Dec 2015 (latest available), they don't make great reading. The balance sheet value went from £8m to -£34m in one year...
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#36SoundCloud employee here. If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.
We (Fraugster Gmbh) are hiring Go developers and devops in Berlin. We've always held a great amount of respect for soundcloud given all that you guys have done for the golang community in Berlin.
If any of you are not based here we can offer relocation/visa support, check my previous comments on whoishiring for more details or contact me directly stefan fraugster com
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#37They also laid off the entire New York team and at least some individuals in Berlin: https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947 https://twitter.com/katalunia_/status/882992899893460993 > Well, SoundCloud just laid off all of its New York engineering > Literally the entire payments and subscriptions team, ads-eng, monetization engineering, everybody > Not really clear to me how the execs think this company…
have someone lined up to buy them and removing duplicated jobs to make themselves more appealing?
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#38SoundCloud employee here. If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.
If you're passionate about independent music, we are actively hiring multiple roles at ReverbNation. http://corporate.reverbnation.com/careers/
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#39I use SoundCloud daily for music I can't find anywhere else. I'm amazed they haven't tried harder to make people like me pay for the service. I would pay if I hit a paywall at some point of usage.
There are ads like every 3 songs on mobile. That would make someone like me either pay for their $4.99 service, (which I didn't even realize existed until recently because they only seem to advertise their $9.99 service) or use something else.
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#40> 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 g…
Isn't facebook basically file hosting with a bunch of links?