SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices • Hacker News Board

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#41

Post by komodo » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:06 PM UTC

cturitzin wrote: post #29

I 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 is a paywall, but only for the kind of music you can find everywhere else.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#42

Post by doublerebel » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

brink wrote: post #39

cturitzin wrote: post #29

I 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.

The ads are mostly regionally targeted/restricted so users might not see them if they have the right IP. E.g. in Canada and France I can't recall hearing an ad but they spammed me in the US until I finally paid.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#43

Post by nodesocket » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

kayoone wrote: post #31

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.

Also signals the difficulty in building large companies in the European market. I've been to Berlin a handful of times, and even tried to raise money from Berlin investors... Needless to say it was a very frustrating process. They are very conservative and risk adverse. Additionally the bureaucracy and "red-tape" hampers business.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#44

Post by expertentipp » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

The wonder child of Berlin's startup scene is deceasing. Says a lot about the scene unfortunately.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#45

Post by komodo » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

raesene6 wrote: post #35

niftich wrote: post #17

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. 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...

I wonder what their terms were when they signed up with the labels to be yet another Spotify clone. If it was any sort of upfront payment that would hit them hard since I don't think they have many subscribers to their SoundCloud plus (or whatever it's called)

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#46

Post by danpalmer » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

SoundCloud 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're hiring at Thread in London – https://www.thread.com/jobs

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#47

Post by aembleton » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

SoundCloud 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're currently hiring for the following roles at Rentalcars in London:

- Mobile Engineering Lead - http://grnh.se/0sikan1

- Senior UX Designer - http://grnh.se/4hd0ix1

- Software Engineering Manager - http://grnh.se/8qix6m1

- Senior Product Owner - http://grnh.se/qdkir31

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#48

Post by clhodapp » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

SoundCloud 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.

On that note, my team (I am the technical lead) at Rocket Lawyer is hiring engineers in San Francisco to work on Scala/Finagle/Finch services within our legal services platform. Rocket Lawyer is replacing a distributed monolith with a proper API-oriented application designed to run on Kubernetes and this team is at the center of that effort. Feel free to contact me by email (chodapp at rocketlawyer dot com).

Edit: My company is also hiring backend devs for another team in London.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#49

Post by pyronite » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

19 days ago an employee of SoundCloud posted an Ask HN about deferred salary reviews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575627

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#50

Post by skylark » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

This is a perfect example of how strong software engineering from competitors can result in you getting completely left in the dust. YouTube and Spotify have great algorithms for suggesting new songs - I feel like when my current song is done, I have a really high chance of hearing another song that I've never heard, but will enjoy.

This is not the case on SoundCloud, where I'm almost always jolted back to reality when the next song comes on.