SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

Quite different from when you voluntarily leave, when you give notice and do knowledge transfer and such. I imagine that is because the employee is unlikely to do anything bad, since they likely have a better future.

I actually liked SoundCloud a lot, before they introduced SoundCloud Go. It wasn't perfect, but since it was free I didn't have an issue to live with the flaws.

But they really burned all the goodwill they had with me and others when they introduced SoundCloud Go. Here's a list of the "features" of SoundCloud Go [0] and why it's difficult to accept them as a user:

1. Access the world’s largest music streaming catalog, a constantly expanding mix from established and emerging artists

It's not clear to me that any of this monthly subscription is going to the artists I like (e.g. like Patreon). So, I'm paying 10 Euros per month for you to run some servers while having a much smaller library than other streaming services?

I do not work in the legal or music industry, but it's my understanding that since most content on SoundCloud is indie remixes, they shouldn't have to pay royalties to the record labels because the content is not copyrighted by the record labels (legally remixes would fall under fair use). So unless I'm very wrong in this impression, SoundCloud bent over to the record labels because they didn't want to be sued out of existence like Grooveshark?

2. Full access to all 150M+ tracks

Versus 120M on a free account. I highly doubt this number, since after introducing SoundCloud Go, a lot of tracks from artists I listened to became "Previews" of 20-30 seconds long and you had to subscribe to SoundCloud Go to listen to the full song. It was pitched as a subscription to access additional/premium content, but this is not what it felt like as a user, seeing songs go from free to pay walled.

3. Offline listening

You updated the Android app to remove the caching option, where previously you could select 100% and have the app entirely cache the song offline, assuming you had listened to it at least once before. I used this feature to cache gigabytes of music on my phone so that once it was listened to on WiFi, I could go out and not consume my 3G data while listening to the playlist. That was a huge "fuck you" to users.

4. No ads

Install an ad blocker in your browser and never hear ads anyway.

5. Millions of premium SoundCloud Go+ tracks

Here's how Engadget covered the announcement:

"the subscription plan costs $10 a month and includes a library of additional content as well as the usual remixes, emerging artists and podcasts." [1]

Given what I've said in #2, this was not the user experience.

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I'm sorry to the talented people who lost their jobs today, but I don't feel any sadness for SoundCloud. This hurt is entirely self inflicted. For any PM's reading, here's how to burn your reputation with users in 3 easy steps:

1. Introduce an expensive subscription service at the same price as your competitors, but don't offer as much content, and don't publicize that any of the money is going toward your content creators

2. Hobble your existing free product to force people to the paid service

3. Don't push any meaningful new features or notable bugfixes to your website or app in years (e.g. needing Flash to play a song, HTML5 which eats up 100% CPU so you can display... something)

Now I use Mixcloud. Not better for individual songs, but great for music discovery given all the podcasts/shows available. Their app is a bit meh, but there aren't any ads, and their website doesn't require Flash and doesn't use lots of CPU. Best of all: they've yet to screw over users by introducing a paid option.

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[0] https://soundcloud.com/go

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/03/29/soundcloud-go-hands-on/