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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

#241
Tough news. And it's great to see posts from people who are in hiring in SF, offering to take a look at affected employees.

We built http://www.layoff-aid.com/ specifically to help candidates and companies find each other, with the main goal of helping candidates find new homes quickly.

More on HN last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14647365

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

follow the money: http://philcalcado.com/2017/06/26/on_leaving_digitalocean.ht...

As they say in the German, der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf her (a fish rots from the head down). This man bears a tremendous amount of responsibility for everything described above.

Can you say why? I don't understand the link.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#244

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.

yup, my last.fm data is my insurance policy. Still enjoy Spotify quite a lot.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#245
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.

For me as a producer is also a joy to sell my music through Bandcamp. The tools to release and monetize my content are far superior than Soundcloud, which in our label we use just to showcase singles without download option.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why they decided to remove them from GitHub already [1] when they were given a 90 days notice [2]. [1] https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882983954059595776 [2] https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882981765064871937

Maybe to limit the damage notified (and thus possibly upset) employees can cause.

Spot on. You never know who might have taken the news in a bad way and decides to lash out.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#248

Things I hate about Soundcloud: 1. They haven't updated their iOS app seemingly in years. It lacks basic controls and makes it impossible to listen to more than a single song at a time. 2. The really shitty "artist engagement" sites that force you to follow 20 other social media accounts in order to get a download. I know this isn't Soundcloud directly, but they're the ones letting artists link off to these basically…

Why would you want to listen to multiple songs simultaneously?

Queueing?

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bandcamp is fine, but it's not on the level that Soundcloud was for browsing music (or for hosting your own). It's still really limited on the social side - the only way you get "likes" is when people download your stuff, the discovery tools are limited to "what's popular in this tag today" and random curated content. There's no "feed" like Soundcloud had. Also, possibly the most irritating part of the site is that fan profiles and artist profiles are distinct entities. So if you want to buy someone else's music but you're signed in, you have to sign out, get on your other account, purchase, and then log out/in again. Super clunky. Last, there's no way to communicate with other people, other than the email that you send when you buy things. I used to legitimately befriend like minded musicians through SC messaging and we'd collab or remix each others stuff. Not a thing on Bandcamp, or not as much. Everything lives outside of their network - in Facebook chats or Reddit threads or some random forum.

However, despite its shortcomings, Bandcamp is where cutting edge music lives in an age without Soundcloud. Labels like PC Music, Mall Music and Dream Catalogue have all pushed independent music to bizarre new limits in the last 4 years alone. Orchid tapes, an indie outfit, made their name off of Bandcamp releases. Alex G, Katie Dey, Elvis Depressedy, and a slew of other musicians have been recognized for their indie releases and now enjoy moderate indie popularity. As long as no one else is beating them, Bandcamp will continue to run on its skeleton frame and empower artists who use it.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#250

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.

The problem is that they couldn't get away with it. Most of the stuff I listen to on SoundCloud is available on other platforms which are free and run by companies that can afford to take a loss (YouTube) or on services I already pay for (Spotify, DI.fm). I'm also greatly disappointed that they seem to have settled on 128kbit MP3 as the peak of quality.

Yup, surprised that they never thought of charging (more) for lossless.
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