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SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

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Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#111

Post by thirdsun »

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…

As far as I know Bandcamp is doing better than ever - they are also a completely different service, not very similar to Soundcloud at all. At Bandcamp you buy and truly own your music. While they offer streaming of those purchases, I‘d surprised if the vast majority of Bandcamp users doesn’t maintain and prefer their local music collection, which Bandcamp probably has contributed to a lot.

It‘s my impression that the Bandcamp userbase is very loyal and full of music enthusiasts - at. least I buy there weekly, about 5-10 releases.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#112

Post by ams6110 »

skylark wrote: post #50

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 wh…

How do you get that to work? I'm not on Spotify, but I use YouTube (Red subscriber in fact) and I find the suggestions to be pretty bad. It just seems to suggest random songs in the same genre mixed with stuff I've listened to before.

I generally don't subscribe to channels or upvote/downvote songs. Is that critical to getting good suggestions? I would have thought just listening history would be enough.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#113

Post by acchow »

legohead wrote: post #28
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 used to go to SC every day. When reposts started becoming a thing I loved it, since the people I followed would repost stuff I would have never found. But I guess I quit in time, as I never saw bots or what you are describing. That's too bad :(

What caused you to quit SC?

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#114

Post by josteink »

gorkonsine wrote: post #70
pmoriarty wrote: post #9

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…

This shows why the modern trend of not buying music and just subscribing to streaming services is so short-sighted. The companies are all basically fly-by-night, and can change their product in a heartbeat, leaving you with something substantially different from what you're used to.

I use streaming services all the time, but this is why I buy albums from artists I like and keep a self-hosted plex library.

Should anything I like ever be taken down, I can still listen to it.

The good thing about music is that it is ultra portable so mixing music from many sources, services and providers is hardly a problem.

And you can clearly see that in how the market for online music works. Unlike video, which is so dysfunctional I'd be hard pressed to even say there is a market.

End result: despite streaming services I still spend $100s of dollars on music every year. 0 on video.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#116

Post by sotojuan »

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.

Capsule is hiring in NYC! Frontend (React) and backend (Django/Python) especially.

https://www.capsulecares.com/

https://jobs.lever.co/capsulecares

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#118

Post by litzer »

thomasbarton wrote: post #66
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.

hi - feel free to drop a resume at thomas(@t)returnly.com - java, ruby, and docker - https://returnly.com/

> Turn Returns Into Repurchases

That slogan took multiple passes to grok.

The fact that the word after 'turn' is 're-turn' makes my mind go to the usual purpose of prefixing words with 're': to do again. That's not how it's used here but then in 'repurchases' it is. There's too many twists and turns (no pun intended) from a language standpoint.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#119

Post by aphextron »

cookiecaper wrote: post #10
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 g…

>File hosting is just not a profitable enterprise.

Yep. There's simply no money in just "pushing bits" anymore. That business has been consolidated by people like Google and Amazon.

You have to both provide a valuable service, as well as create a "network effect" around your product. Otherwise you're easily susceptible to being out competed.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#120

Post by norea-armozel »

I'm not surprised. It seems to me that they lost their way when they thought their competition was Spotify when it really was Bandcamp. At least Bandcamp is still growing especially when it comes to independent musicians and niche genres like synthwave. I really wish them the best of luck to get back on their feet because I think there's still plenty of room for competition in music hosting and sales.
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