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SoundCloud's Collapse

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Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#131

Post by ryanbrunner »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #128
ryanbrunner wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pedantics. Their definition of "startup" vs. yours is completely irrelevant to the point they are trying to make.

Actually, it's central to the conversation. This isn't some semantic quibbling. They were arguing the startup model is broken and then giving an example of an alternative (themselves) without meeting any of the criteria of actually being a startup. I'm convinced that the startup scene is now filled with posers who call themselves startups for prestige. This probably isn't a new phenomenon, but it's relatively new on…

What difference does it make whether he can call himself a startup? Saying "the startup model is broken, I'm happier running my business, which is small and bootstrapped but profitable" doesn't change anything just because he can't use the word "startup".

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#132

Post by skrebbel »

sgentle wrote: post #47

Never do a music industry startup unless you have a billion dollars, can raise a billion dollars, or plan to be acquired by a company with a billion dollars to spare. That's the table stakes for going toe-to-toe with the big three. They'll bleed you to death with licensing fees, deputise you into their copyright enforcement police, upload their songs to your platform on one hand while suing you with the other, and al…

Well, Spotify managed just fine. They didn't have those billions when they started out in Sweden.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#133

Post by Neliquat »

thinbeige wrote: post #27
detaro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

'Every contract'

Not even close.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#134

Post by sillysaurus3 »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #131
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it's central to the conversation. This isn't some semantic quibbling. They were arguing the startup model is broken and then giving an example of an alternative (themselves) without meeting any of the criteria of actually being a startup. I'm convinced that the startup scene is now filled with posers who call themselves startups for prestige. This probably isn't a new phenomenon, but it's relatively new on…

What difference does it make whether he can call himself a startup? Saying "the startup model is broken, I'm happier running my business , which is small and bootstrapped but profitable" doesn't change anything just because he can't use the word "startup".

It's the distinction of outsider vs insider. Someone who actually runs a startup is better positioned to criticize the model. More than that, if everyone who started a startup were to follow his model, no one would care about startups because they wouldn't matter. But they do matter, and the reason why they matter is that they grow quickly.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#135

Post by wvh »

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…

I mostly agree with the grandiose self-delusion of modern valuations, but I guess it also depends on what kind of service you're providing. If there's a social element, i.e. you share things with others, "community", you might lose to faster moving companies who take your audience; and if there's an ecosystem involved, you might not reach the critical mass to sustain it.

Perhaps you're not in a critical mass sort of industry?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#136

Post by lukaslalinsky »

cupcakestand wrote: post #87
sgentle wrote: post #47

Never do a music industry startup unless you have a billion dollars, can raise a billion dollars, or plan to be acquired by a company with a billion dollars to spare. That's the table stakes for going toe-to-toe with the big three. They'll bleed you to death with licensing fees, deputise you into their copyright enforcement police, upload their songs to your platform on one hand while suing you with the other, and al…

Best comment in the thread. It shows that one of SoundCloud's key problem is an oligopolostic industry they are dealing with.

SoundCloud's key problem is that they couldn't stay small because of VC money, not the music industry.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#137

Post by oelmekki »

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?

Probably common, but they seem to have asked for it. 3 years ago, they published a presentation on slideshare [1] where they explained they were migrating from a monolith to microservices. That could make sense for them, given their size, but they explained as well that "rails is for pet blogs" (in the content of the presentation) and that they will take the opportunity to use many different languages. As I mentioned in comments back then, this was due to cause problems (although, I did not imagine it would go as far as people rewriting others apps).

[1] https://www.slideshare.net/pcalcado/from-a-monolithic-ruby-o...

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#138

Post by pas »

thinbeige wrote: post #59
rrdharan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

Technically you are right. Still it's a long-term pump and dump game. VCs praise their investments to the utmost (which is their job and because their believe in their investments) but mainly to attract more investors (pump) and at some point to find potential buyers (dump) where you can exchange retail investors with dumb corporations.

Intent matters. If they promote it, and honestly believe in it, and want to cash out at an IPO, then it's just good old investing.

You don't have to think it's the best thing ever. Or that it'll surely work. But you can still think that it's a pretty decent investment, high risk, high expected payout.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#139

Post by lukaslalinsky »

thinbeige wrote: post #76
k-mcgrady wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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). Again you're not understanding what I'm saying. You seem to think of music (or SoundCloud) as only EDM. When SoundCloud started it was largely amateur and indie 'analog' musicians and songwriters (i.e. people playing instruments and…

> Again you're not understanding what I'm saying. How many times do you want to repeat this? > SoundCloud did not start off with DJ mixes or copyrighted material. The CEO and CTO were themselves very much into EDM. SC positioned itself repetoire-wise as a DJ platform from very early on, most tracks, traffic, the first surge were EDM-based the first years. And 99% was copyrighted material stitched together. I don't kn…

It was a platform for producers, not DJs.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#140

Post by pas »

WJW wrote: post #90
Myrmornis wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, GitHub is a nice comparison, and has been transformative in promoting a hobbyist's ecosystem while also being a viable commercial entity. However, I think you are being a bit unfair and leaning towards characterizing the artists as valuing obscurity and non-mainstreamness per se. The point about SoundCloud is that it provided access to the people making music from their bedrooms, the hobbyists of github. Art…

I think you are right about the musical value in the long tail, but what I was driving at was that the monetary value is concentrated in the 'top', in a power law fashion. Since soundcloud has to pay for its employees and servers it needs money, but most of the ways of actually getting that money will chase away users. I think a self-hosted soundcloud where people host their own music but use the network for discover…

How would you distribute the recommendation system efficiently?
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