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.
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SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
321–330 of 455 posts
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#322SoundCloud 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.
Hey Aaron -- super sorry to hear about the situation. Soundcloud is a fantastic product and company. If you or your colleagues are interested, Plaid is hiring engineers in SF. You can find a full description here: https://plaid.com/careers.
Or, better, just drop me a line directly: zach [at] plaid [dot] com
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get it. You feel like maybe we're hitting some fundamental limitation of capitalism, whereby deserving artists aren't properly supported by the economic ecosystem around them. You're right in the media ecosystem is weird here. Music is relatively unique in that it is something that's easy to consume more or less piecemeal. Nobody reads only 1/12th of a book or watches 3/10ths of a movie, but these are common in how…
Take this with a grain of salt as economics is not my field but... >You feel like maybe we're hitting some fundamental limitation of capitalism, whereby deserving artists aren't properly supported by the economic ecosystem around them. It's actually the opposite. I would like the artists to get paid, but it's more that the payment barrier seems like a waste of time and energy. > Couple this with a lowered barrier to…
So far, a subscription model is as close as we've come. It allows users to deal with a minimum of payment friction a minimal number of times while still paying.
Any time your business is exchanging information for money - music, video games, movies, etc - there's always an incentive to circumvent it. The approach thus far has been to make it convenient, easy, and cheap enough that users are willing to pay in some fashion.
I am deeply curious what you imagine this artificial-barrier-free experience that still coerces payments to be like, however.
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#324SoundCloud 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.
Hey Aaron - thanks for posting and sorry to hear this.
If any of your colleagues are interested, Square Cash (https://cash.me) is hiring backend/server, iOS and Android engineers in SF. Reach out to ayo (at) squareup dot com if interested: https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Square/743999652546124
Best of luck regardless. Looks like lots of great options in this thread.
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#325SoundCloud 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.
Square Cash (https://cash.me) is hiring backend/server, iOS and Android engineers in SF. Reach out to ayo (at) squareup dot com if interested.
Best of luck!
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#326SoundCloud 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're big fans of SoundCloud here at Feed.fm. If you still want to deliver music to the world, then join up with us! We cater to businesses already making money, instead of struggling to make a profit selling directly to consumers.
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take this with a grain of salt as economics is not my field but... >You feel like maybe we're hitting some fundamental limitation of capitalism, whereby deserving artists aren't properly supported by the economic ecosystem around them. It's actually the opposite. I would like the artists to get paid, but it's more that the payment barrier seems like a waste of time and energy. > Couple this with a lowered barrier to…
So far, a subscription model is as close as we've come. It allows users to deal with a minimum of payment friction a minimal number of times while still paying. Any time your business is exchanging information for money - music, video games, movies, etc - there's always an incentive to circumvent it. The approach thus far has been to make it convenient, easy, and cheap enough that users are willing to pay in some fas…
A subscription model is the best that I've see so far, but it's still a shitty system, and it seems fundamentally so, IMO.
> Any time your business is exchanging information for money - music, video games, movies, etc - there's always an incentive to circumvent it.
Sure, but the new incentive is that it is currently a better product/service in almost every aspect. It used to be that circumvention was to save money, but that's not why a large number of people do it now. The service is better, the quality is better, the selection is better, etc. Maybe I'm missing something, but other than "the artist gets paid" I can't think of a single thing that going through an official route makes better.
> I am deeply curious what you imagine this artificial-barrier-free experience that still coerces payments to be like, however.
I have no idea, that's why I'm wondering if we've hit a limit to our current system. And it's not just music, basically anything that's digitally distributed is running into the same limit.
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#328SoundCloud is my go-to for music while programming. I've spent countless hours curating my likes, playlists, follows, etc. I'd be quite upset if the service shuts down, 1) for the artists that have gained large followings through the service and 2) for all the personal time spent that will in the end mean nothing. I think I'm reiterating what has been said before, but the reposting is horrendous. It's made the listen…
If your playlists are public, please share :)
Here's a dump of a bunch of artists if you like melodic house for programming :)
https://soundcloud.com/miloh-fliger
https://soundcloud.com/wilddark
https://soundcloud.com/bedouin-official
https://soundcloud.com/hishamzahran
https://soundcloud.com/theokottis
https://soundcloud.com/ldsroom
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#329Things 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…
> Things I hate about Soundcloud 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’…
> legally remixes would fall under fair use
No. Remixes are a derivative work. They are a copyright violation without permission from the owner. Fair use would be satire or an excerpt for the purpose of commentary. Remixing is just more involved sampling and Vanilla Ice can tell you how well that works out without paying the piper.
Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
#330I was a director of an engineering department for SoundCloud for a time and left several years ago. Frankly none of this should be surprising: nobody there could figure out a product definition nor a monetization plan. What is more: the engineering organization at SoundCloud at large was completely fractured and suffered from in-fighting. Nobody trusted anyone across organizations. There was no shortage of bullying e…
I was a long-time SC engineer and can confirm, the influx of Brazilians and especially former ThoughtWorks folks was the inflection point in the destruction of the engineering organization. Conniving and intensely political, they absolutely ruined what was a compassionate, innovative, and productive culture.
I know the type. It's unfortunate that you have got a taste of the worst we have to offer. There are entire companies that are composed of nothing but these types. Most do not survive abroad and self select so you tend not to get the bad bunch – unless you reach a critical mass, then it becomes self-sustaining.