Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SoundCloud's Collapse

buzzfeed.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 331 posts

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#21

Post by thinbeige »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

SoundCloud could have been a nice business if they hadn't got greedy. From the beginning (or close to it) there have been various paid accounts for artists which a lot of people used. SoundCloud was the best place to discover new music from unsigned artists. There were unsigned artists with tracks on it that blew up and eventually got picked up by major labels. But: - SoundCloud neglected the platform. - Then they di…

> Then it became overrun with major label artists.

So what. There also many excellent major label artist and it's good to have them. Many new album releases are missing on SoundCloud but available on Spotify from day one.

Probably I am the only one but I find most 'DJ mixes' on SoundCloud lack in quality/creativity (I am into electronic music though). Maybe some like them I think 95% of them are subpar and sound like my nephew created a song with Magix Music Maker. These mixes and 'the extended repetoire' are no competitive advantage over Spotify and Co.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#22

Post by detaro »

thinbeige wrote: post #18
Yokohiii wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot follow you. By no means you can openly criticize the managers of your own company. Even nowadays this could be handled as mutiny. On top of that, management is usually only half transparent at best. Causing doubt if the decisions are just bad or nobody got the whole picture.

You are right and I was not clear. What I mean: Since they all signed NDAs they are not allowed to openly criticize their company—ever. Not when being hired and not after being fired. Since 173 were fired it's easy to ignore NDAs because they won't get caught. But it's not right, they break a significant agreement and this is so typical for employees (just head to Glassdoor and how much internal stuff is disclosed).

We don't know what kind of NDAs SC employees had to sign/how valid they are. At least some of the issues are listed as only appearing after a while. Journalists likely are a lot more receptive to/asking around for employees with complaints when there is a general air of failure (or total overblown hype) surrounding a company.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#23

Post by thinbeige »

iagooar wrote: post #14

This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…

> Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars?

This reminds me of the current ICOs and the token economy. Early adopters try to push new currencies like crazy to cash out once popularity peaks.

SoundCloud was never thought as a real business. Everybody involved in the music industry should have known that it's not possible to build a solid business based on the oligopoly of three music labels and with Spotify having a headstart of 50m users and being still not profitable.

But still all these VCs with USV leading the way told us it's the next billion dollar unicorn. Old-school pump and dump.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#24

Post by elmar »

iagooar wrote: post #14

This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…

personally I think if they had focus on monetizing the artists side of the business and keep it small as you say they could have a great business not at the scale of Spotify but sustainable.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#25

Post by Myrmornis »

This seemed to me a very sad story. The time during which SoundCloud as it was known and loved really existed was the era before they were really worrying about their "business model". As soon as they contemplated how they could exist long term, they started copying mainstream music services in a way that no-one loved. The real question is: given how much amazing free content there is, how are we going to nurture valuable cultural ecosystems like soundcloud, and create a meaningful and stable niche for them and their employees in our economies?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#26

Post by reustle »

Mikushi wrote: post #20
xfer wrote: post #10

> According to one former SoundCloud Berlin employee, a lack of direction from Wahlforss, who served as chief technology officer, made things worse, with some engineers going rogue and rebuilding their colleagues’ work in their preferred programming language. Does this happen at other startups?

Happens everywhere. In corp I've seen engineers go behind their manager's back to write something in their favourite language knowing it would've been rejected if discussion had happen beforehand.

That sounds like a reasonable reason to fire someone

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#27

Post by thinbeige »

detaro wrote: post #22
thinbeige wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right and I was not clear. What I mean: Since they all signed NDAs they are not allowed to openly criticize their company—ever. Not when being hired and not after being fired. Since 173 were fired it's easy to ignore NDAs because they won't get caught. But it's not right, they break a significant agreement and this is so typical for employees (just head to Glassdoor and how much internal stuff is disclosed).

We don't know what kind of NDAs SC employees had to sign/how valid they are. At least some of the issues are listed as only appearing after a while. Journalists likely are a lot more receptive to/asking around for employees with complaints when there is a general air of failure (or total overblown hype) surrounding a company.

> We don't know what kind of NDAs SC employees had to sign/how valid they are.

Every employment contract has by nature a NDA embedded. And those are much stricter than dedicated NDAs since employment contracts get rarely negotiated line by line, most employees just accept and sign employment contracts.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#28

Post by Myrmornis »

iagooar wrote: post #14

This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…

No, it shows us that our economies make it very hard to maintain a valuable and beautiful cultural/artistic ecosystem as a commercial entity.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#29

Post by k-mcgrady »

thinbeige wrote: post #21
k-mcgrady wrote: post #17

SoundCloud could have been a nice business if they hadn't got greedy. From the beginning (or close to it) there have been various paid accounts for artists which a lot of people used. SoundCloud was the best place to discover new music from unsigned artists. There were unsigned artists with tracks on it that blew up and eventually got picked up by major labels. But: - SoundCloud neglected the platform. - Then they di…

> Then it became overrun with major label artists. So what. There also many excellent major label artist and it's good to have them. Many new album releases are missing on SoundCloud but available on Spotify from day one. Probably I am the only one but I find most 'DJ mixes' on SoundCloud lack in quality/creativity (I am into electronic music though). Maybe some like them I think 95% of them are subpar and sound like…

>> So what. There also many excellent major label artist and it's good to have them.

You're missing the point. I've no problem with major label artists but when you start dealing with them you start dealing with licensing. Then you waste time, don't develop the platform, and abandon the indie artists that got you to where you are. You need to take the point in context of the rest of my argument. When Spotify/Apple Music/Pandora exist why would you enter that market when it's not the market that you started in and you have no chance of beating them? Focus on indie music and you have a business where people actually pay money for the service and you become profitable.

>> Maybe some like them I think 95% of them are subpar and sound like my nephew created a song with Magix Music Maker.

Well that's how music discovery works. You have to go through rubbish to find the gems. If you want pro level stuff every time you should use Spotify/Beatport etc. I've been on SoundCloud since the beginning (since before it even became the go-to place for electronic music) and it was a great way to discover really good songwriters. You have to do some work to find them but that's part of the fun. SoundCloud tried to evolve into something completely different than it began as. Your expectations are a perfect example of how that skewed the public perception of it to the point where you and I believe it is completely different things - in reality it tries to be both but doesn't excel at either.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#30

Post by yeukhon »

manmal wrote: post #19
iagooar wrote: post #14

This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…

Once you have investors, they want their money to grow, and this is not possible by staying small. We have invested in a startup we work with, and given the high risk of failure, I would not be happy with a meager growth rate of I'm a big fan of bootstrapping myself, and it's the best model IFF you can get by without investors. If you, like SoundCloud, have a product that does not break-even, then you will need inves…

Staying small != don't grow business. I would never hire crazy so people in the startup can imagine spinning up new projects new microservice new crazy revolutionary database/big data/ new KV store/new cache layer out of curiosity.

Till one point, when the business is so big, growing engineering team to over 100 is inevitable. But plently of really successful tech companies did not overgrow their team size for a number of years. E.g Facebook.

Human captial spent is actually the most expensive even comparing space rental if you add up salary, bonus, and benefits. I also will not recommend startups in their early stage (or even until they can break-even for a long time) to flu candidates over. There is really no reason to fly people over until you want to hire that person. Flying and hotel adds up big time too. Google can offer this because spending a couple millions doesn't matter to them.

Post reply on HN