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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

#171

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.

Living in Berlin, doing freelance. Just giving my advice here.

Now is a good opportunity for you guys to go that road. It's never been easier to find projects and there are lots of companies that can benefit the experience you got and offer short-term contractor work.

If someone needs help to get started in Berlin ( taxes, advice, etc. ) feel free to contact me.

Wish you good luck!

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#172
post #134
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Youtube or Spotify make any real money. Recommendation algorithms are the least of Soundcloud's worries as the platform just doesn't have any real business plan and just can't play the "growth game" anymore. There is just no real money in selling access to or hosting digital music. Soundcloud used to be a place for DJs. They died when they tried to go mainstream instead of focusing on DJs and selling them ser…

> Youtube make any real money I hope you mean specifically on music, because that comment is laughable. > Recommendation algorithms are the least of Soundcloud's worries as the platform just doesn't have any real business plan and just can't play the "growth game" anymore. This 1000%

YouTube has considerable revenue, but as far as I can tell they're still unprofitable.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#174
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…

> YouTube and Spotify have great algorithms for suggesting new songs Spotify recommendations are far from great. They crowd source based on popularity, Pandora's recommendation engine is far superior.

My anecdata indicates the opposite, as far as quality of recommendations is concerned. Curious how matters of taste might mean that you can't accurately make sweeping generalizations like this.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#175
As a cost cutting strategy, offices in San Francisco and London are plausible candidates. Particularly for a company based in the EU those cities are likely to hinder flexibility regarding colocating teams and staff due to increasing regulatory hurdles regarding work visas.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#176
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…

Yet they still don't even scratch what last.fm used to be when it came to recommendation.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#177

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 are hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for our Platform team at Demandbase (demandbase.com) at our SF office.

Apply here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/demandbase/jobs/732055#.WV6CrhM...

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#178

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…

Trending Friend Likes is a Trivial GraphDB problem. We could help them offload that to a separate service if they'd ask.

MATCH (u:User {Id:123})-[:FRIENDS]->(f)-[:LIKED_ON_2017_07_08]->(t:Track) RETURN t, COUNT(f) ORDER BY COUNT(f) DESC LIMIT 25

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#179

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.

Pandora is hiring for a few positions in our analytics teams. If you're interested in a career in big data analytics or data science have a look at some of our open roles.

- https://pandora.com/careers/position?id=oRme5fwg - https://pandora.com/careers/position?id=oSMG4fw8

These aren't under the best circumstances but if folks who are affected are interested in continuing their career in music in Oakland Pandora is an awesome place to work.

Feel free to contact me for any questions about our open roles, good luck with your search!

phowe at pandora dot com

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#180

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…

Agree on the reposts issue. I used to spend 30 minutes plus a day finding new music, then stopped after that change.

I made this if it helps anyone: https://github.com/kyranb/SoundCloud-Feed-Cleaner

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