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SoundCloud's Collapse

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Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#101

Post by duncan_bayne »

Myrmornis wrote: post #28
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.

The music industry takes $18bn / year revenue, and movies $62bn. Perhaps I'm missing your point, because that seems like a whole lot of "valuable" to me?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#103

Post by joshyeager »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #86
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…

When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth startup. We don't make millions, we don't "disrupt" the industry, yet we solve our customers' problems and delight them. We won't ever run out of money, as we carefully check each and every expenditure, and have growing savings in the bank. When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth…

That definition of "startup" is very valley-centric. Most of the rest of the world still means it the way the grandparent meant. A small, fairly young company that is building a new product/service.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#104

Post by sillysaurus3 »

codegladiator wrote: post #99
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth startup. We don't make millions, we don't "disrupt" the industry, yet we solve our customers' problems and delight them. We won't ever run out of money, as we carefully check each and every expenditure, and have growing savings in the bank. When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth…

> For it to be a startup, you have to have a large target market. Making up your own definition of startup ? A start-up is just a newly established business.

Actually, I'm using http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

That's like calling a newly established barber shop a startup. It's not.

The GP is working on a podcast hosting company. The market for people who want to host podcasts is miniscule. Large enough to sustain a company, sure. But that's not a startup.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#105

Post by nothrabannosir »

rrdharan wrote: post #51
thinbeige wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 head…

Traditionally pump and dump meant taking advantage of unsophisticated retail investors. I don't think this qualifies as pump and dump unless you mean the earlier stage VCs somehow managed to cash out at the expense of some later naive shareholders? In this case sounds like everyone (except maybe Ljung) lost out..

> In this case sounds like everyone (except maybe Ljung) lost out..

Well, the users of Soundcloud have, arguably, not lost out. All in all, I've gotten mostly positive experiences from it.

You hear the same style of argument made w.r.t. Uber: VCs subsidizing our rides. VCs subsidizing our... whatever-you-call-soundcloud.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#106

Post by sillysaurus3 »

joshyeager wrote: post #103
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth startup. We don't make millions, we don't "disrupt" the industry, yet we solve our customers' problems and delight them. We won't ever run out of money, as we carefully check each and every expenditure, and have growing savings in the bank. When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth…

That definition of "startup" is very valley-centric. Most of the rest of the world still means it the way the grandparent meant. A small, fairly young company that is building a new product/service.

There's a word for that: a business.

If someone built a bar in your neighborhood, would you call it a startup? It meets all your criteria. But at that point the word becomes useless.

You could argue that it's not a new service. Yet some of the most successful startups applied technology to old ideas, like Craigslist and eBay.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#107

Post by bartread »

thinbeige wrote: post #36
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?

Great quote and I had to smirk when reading this. It happens all the time. I remember a time when hiring RoR guys. Even the codebase was already in RoR, every new RoR dev said 'OMG we have to rewrite the entire app, the codebase is a mess'.

It's true, and I had to smile at that too, although nowadays I tend to take the "it's all terrible, we have to rewrite everything" attitude as either venting frustration (which is fine unless it becomes disruptive to forward progress) or a sign of professional immaturity (which may or may not be a problem, depending on context).

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#108

Post by narrator »

Myrmornis wrote: post #25

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 val…

The problem with the music business is the problem with the art business in general. There are way too many people producing art and music these days and not enough consumers.

The price of music is negative in that people have so much music available that you'd have to pay people something or massively promote to get people to spend time listening to a new band. Companies like distrokid seem to do ok because they charge artists to distribute music. Fans really can't be bothered to pay anymore.

I never said to myself, at least in the last ten years: "damn, I wish I had more music". For me, music is "done". I have plenty, I don't need anymore and it is of much better quality than what it used to be back in the 80s and 90s when I used to spend a lot of money on it.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#109

Post by bartread »

pjmlp wrote: post #34
Mikushi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then they go and write a blog entry about how much productive they are now, instead of what was the actual business impact if any, to the company customers or revenue.

^^^This.

And too often little consideration is given to impact further down the line. E.g., does this tie up your development teams in future doing non-value-adding work to fix breaking changes? What effect does this have on ongoing support costs? How easy is this skillset to hire for? How does this fit in with our roadmap?

But it doesn't matter because I've bolstered my CV and by the time those things become really painful I'll be long gone.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#110

Post by lupin3 »

whofailed wrote: post #67

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.

Soundcloud is one the rare service I would be happy to pay for. However, their current subscription does not bring me anything interesting. One idea would be to have a monthly limit, and propose an unlimited subscription at around $1 to $3.

And how come I have to pay for the artist album through Bandcamp after listening on Soundcloud? Is there no way to implement a payment straight from Soundcloud?

Also, there is an obvious return of the podcast scene: here again, plenty of ways to make money from that.

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