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SoundCloud's Collapse

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Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#61

Post by thinbeige »

tuxxy wrote: post #55
thinbeige wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You think all those mixes come for free? They have to be licensed as well once the embedded song snippets exceed 30sec which most of them do (also depending on the local jurisdiction). Soundcloud had to find agreements with the labels sooner or later anyway because of the mixes a…

> 99% of the mixes on SoundCloud are crap. Spoken like a person who didn't understand all that was on the platform. You do realize that SoundCloud had basically spawned a different genre of hip hop and rap, right? It's not just dance mixes, there's a lot of stuff that's super unique on there and it's not just hip hop, rap, or edm.

You should have put the quote into its context, I wrote if it's a matter of taste then I implied that (in my opinion) 99% is crap. You might have a different opinion because you have a different taste.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#62

Post by GarethX »

elmar wrote: post #38
yeukhon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 numb…

> But plently of really successful tech companies did not overgrow their team size for a number of years. E.g Facebook. A much better example is WhatsUp with 55 employees at the time of aquisition.

Or Instagram - they had 13 employees when they were acquired.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#63

Post by elmar »

yeukhon wrote: post #46
manmal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't break-even, how are you going to employ even two people without an investor? Where does the money come from?

In case it was not clear, I was talking from getting VC money, meaning you already have some cash to run for some months. Why would a VC want to see their money burn to the ground if all they see is hiring 200 people when you really just 100 people?

don't ignore the lack business acumen of some VCs.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#64

Post by sddfd »

What I never understood was why they were opening offices in SF, NY, and London, without having the revenue to back them up.

In my eyes that was just flushing huge amounts of money down the drain.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#65

Post by snom380 »

thinbeige wrote: post #54
snom380 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote, but: - Presumably the people inside the company has tried for years to pressure for a change. When that doesn't work, and especially once a big layoff happens, it's understandable that employees vent their frustration in public. And that might be what it takes for outside people (investors etc) to make necessary changes at the top. It's not about backstabbing. If these employees didn't care at all…

> it's understandable that employees vent their frustration in public They still break an agreement. > YouTube is evidence that it _is_ possible, Music isn't their core. And btw the agreement between Youtube and the German GEMA took a decade.

Does the fact that it's not their core contradict what I'm saying? Youtube is still hugely popular for people to share their own recordings and remixes.

I know that it took a long time for YouTube to figure out the licensing stuff. As I said, tremendously difficult, yes, but not impossible.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#66

Post by jackninja1 »

I think a few things are needed in order for SoundCloud to restore some of its value:

- They need to evaluate how their (IMHO) only competitor HypeMachine does its things, and if possible consider an acquisition

- While probably very costly they need to redesign their website (and app), their latest redesign was received very negativly

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#67

Post by whofailed »

Contrarian here:

Soundcloud is an incredibly valuable property. They have obviously had a few managerial cock-ups, but in reality they have massive user buyin, huge network effect, and anyone who can get some equity in them during this current time of massive negative sentiment is going to do VERY WELL. I wish I had a way to buy in at this point.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#68

Post by snom380 »

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).

I think it's right to speak publically when called for (for instance with whisteblowers). Without people doing that, we'd actually have much less transparency in our democracy.

Companies where employees actually keep secrets do so by earning the trust and respect of their employees, not by writing ironclad employee agreements.

In this particular case, for these employees, I think it boils down to whether they honor their loyalty to the company vision more than their employee agreement.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#69

Post by StreamBright »

Well, there were several attempts from different groups, companies and people to build on their API that failed for no good reason. They simply decline the API access request without any reasoning. They could have made money from 3rd parties, or even through selling music directly on their site. I usually go to Soundcloud to discover music and than to Bandcamp to buy it. I am not sure why this was never a focus to them.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#70

Post by thinbeige »

snom380 wrote: post #65
thinbeige wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's understandable that employees vent their frustration in public They still break an agreement. > YouTube is evidence that it _is_ possible, Music isn't their core. And btw the agreement between Youtube and the German GEMA took a decade.

Does the fact that it's not their core contradict what I'm saying? Youtube is still hugely popular for people to share their own recordings and remixes. I know that it took a long time for YouTube to figure out the licensing stuff. As I said, tremendously difficult, yes, but not impossible.

> Does the fact that it's not their core contradict what I'm saying?

Yes it does. Youtube is not about music, their focus lies somewhere else, music complements their product but they are not dependent on it and besides, it's a just one rev stream compared to their main rev channels. Another example: Apple has Apple Music to strengthen the network effect of their products, not because they want to enter the music business. So, both used labels to complement their core products. Both would survive without deals to the labels. SoundCloud would not survive without those deals because then SoundCloud wouldn't have any product.

> As I said, tremendously difficult, yes, but not impossible.

I disagree, 10 years negotiations sounds like something impossible for a company which core solely relies on music, who wants to fund a company for 10 years with an unclear outcome?? For Youtube it was a different story: In this ten years Youtube severely damaged GEMA's reputation by displaying billion times that it's GEMA's fault that user can't listen to music. So, it's questionable if any other company with less power would have been able to strike a deal with the GEMA. Anyways, Youtube could have negotiated 100 years, they still would make revs through other channels.

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