Live data from Hacker News

SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

techcrunch.com

151–160 of 455 posts

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#151

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.

Tapjoy is hiring engineers and product managers in San Francisco and Cambridge.

https://home.tapjoy.com/careers/

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's great you have a two-pronged approach (buying stuff you really like, so you're not out of luck if the streaming provider folds like this), but I have to question your assertion about online video: Netflix is clearly a success story I think. Maybe the only real standout, but still it exists. Lots of people are signed up for it. There's also Amazon video; I don't know how successful it is, but people do rent videos on there.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#153

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…

How successful are CBbaby (nowadays) and Bandcamp? I know people who use Bandcamp but I don't know how much of a bubble I'm in.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#154
post #141
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…

I cannot comment on Spotify, but I pretty much dislike all Youtube recommendations. I get sometimes different version of the same song again followed by some other song that is also popular but has nothing to do with what I'm listening to followed by something else I "liked before" but obviously don't want to listen to since I already heard it many times. That is followed by a different version of the same song again…

My biggest gripe with YT recommendations is that songs I hit dislike on and always browse away from are constantly placed in my autoplay queue. There are some songs out there that I just hate and there's just no way for me to avoid them.

I've never had this issue with Spotify - mostly because of how differently its recommendations work - and it's probably one of the biggest reasons I've abandoned YT for Spotify.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#155

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.

Wheelhouse, https://www.usewheelhouse.com is hiring for multiple roles in SF! https://jobs.lever.co/usewheelhouse/

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#156
ITT no one admitting that the problem with the recorded music industry is now the fans who expect bits that make sound to be free while other bits are paid.

Spotify, Pandora, and Soundcloud fixed just about everything that people said was wrong with the industry from the consumer point of view. And don't give me that line about the labels screwing artists because thanks to fans who won't even pay for a premium subscription, Spotify literally can't afford to pay artists more without going under entirely.

TL;DR - music doesn't want to be free. Selfish people want it to be free.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#158

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 (Songtrust) are a music startup helping songwriters get paid more money, we are hiring python engineers, tech support, and a marketing/growth lead: http://blog.songtrust.com/jobs/

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#159
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I am so pleased with Bandcamp, every time I buy music it is such a joy to see a link to Bandcamp.

I'm too very happy with Bandcamp, and it's usually the first place I check to see if an album I want is available, if it's not directly for sale on an artist's website.

That said, music is extremely portable, so it's easy to buy from several online shops and combine it all in your own library later.

Based on that I sometimes remind myself that, unlike streaming services, where you are forced to put all your eggs in one basket and can only have one source, with music sales there might be other options too. There's actually a free market out there!

That's extremely rare on today's internet, and I want to support that. Therefore I consciously try to buy stuff from other sources too, like Ninjashop, 7 digital, Waste, etc. But it's just very easy to come back to bandcamp.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#160

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…

How successful are CBbaby (nowadays) and Bandcamp? I know people who use Bandcamp but I don't know how much of a bubble I'm in.

Insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

The music industry is a shade of what it once was, and both CDBaby and Bandcamp are tiny slithers off of that.

Post reply on HN