SoundCloud's Collapse • Hacker News Board

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#161

Post by Frondo » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:03 PM UTC

thinbeige wrote: post #31

erikb wrote: post #12

If anybody else is also put off by the writing style: There is some actual content there. One just needs to get through the first third which basically just repeats the headline. TL;DR (without my opinion added): Top Management started too late to think about making actual money. They also hired an asshole for their US offices. When they got an opportunity to be bought by Twitter they asked for way too much money. An…

> If anybody else is also put off by the writing style: The writing style is just fine, it's surprisingly high quality considering this is coming from Buzzfeed (even if it's the new serious branch).

Just an FYI, the investigative news division of BuzzFeed has been around for something like two years now. It's not so new anymore. :)

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#162

Post by selectodude » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:03 PM UTC

dullgiulio wrote: post #126

glogla wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked, Spotify had 70 million users. That's one employee per 23333 users. Is that too much? How many thousands users should you have per employee? Because if they want to have support at all (unlike, say, Google), they need quite a few employees.

You should really count the Premium (paying) users only. The others don't make the company any money.

50 million paid users, 140 million total users.

https://press.spotify.com/us/about/

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#163

Post by bogomipz » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:04 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #132

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.

Did they manage just fine? They had to cut the same extortionate deal with the big 4 records labels and give them an equity steak in the company as well[1]. Given the recent figures I think the jury is still out on whether Spotify and this whole "the more we make the more they take" business model is actually sustainable:

"In 2016, Spotify lost just over $600 million ($601.4 million), up significantly from 2015's losses of just under $258 million. This means losses increased by 133%."[2]

[1] http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2017/06/15/spotify...

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#164

Post by jamesrcole » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:11 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #156

jamesrcole wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. A single case never proves any generalisation. (I'm not taking any position here on what such valuations mean in general - it's not something I know much about).

Ok, I'll give you essentially all of the 2001 dotcom crash companies. Is that enough examples?

Did you read what I wrote?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#165

Post by loomer » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:13 PM UTC

It seems Discord is in the early stages of something like this. They have dozens of employees and a pre-money valuation of 725 million US dollars. However, very few users are buying their premium service, with most saying it isn't worth it, with this paid version only coming out a year after the release of Discord.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#166

Post by bogomipz » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

Not showing up to company retreats, circulating pictures of yourself taking private jets and hanging out with celebrities in Ibiza, doing a Ferragamo ad - CEO Alexander Ljung sounds like Erlich Bachman.

It's easy to write those things off as petty gripes but I think they are important in that illustrate a CEO who doesn't understand that those are bad "optics" for employees who are seeing layoffs and lack of funds available to higher talent. And a CEO who doesn't understand the nuances of this might also not see the nuances of lots of other important areas of their business. Why does the board not remove him?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#167

Post by abhi3 » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:20 PM UTC

blitzprog wrote: post #97

From a consumer perspective, SoundCloud lost my interest when I heard it's 128 kbps transcoded mp3 you're getting when streaming songs. No thanks.

So until you heard its 128 kbps you had no idea? If that's the case then there's no problem with it streaming @128

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#168

Post by jameskegel » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:26 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #166

Not showing up to company retreats, circulating pictures of yourself taking private jets and hanging out with celebrities in Ibiza, doing a Ferragamo ad - CEO Alexander Ljung sounds like Erlich Bachman. It's easy to write those things off as petty gripes but I think they are important in that illustrate a CEO who doesn't understand that those are bad "optics" for employees who are seeing layoffs and lack of funds ava…

We aren't doing "optics" anymore; that was more of a mid-election phenomenon. CEOs are largely just figureheads these days- one could argue that in this music industry it is important to have somewhat of a splashy rockstar image to exude legitimacy.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#169

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:27 PM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #75

elmar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of google sucesses outside search were done like that without the CEO having knowledge.

Ads: doubleclick, bought Maps: bought Youtube: bought Android: bought What else?

[deleted]

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#170

Post by jameskegel » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:30 PM UTC

cupcakestand wrote: post #89

sdenton4 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I could see an argument that SoundCloud has to have a presence at burning man... It's the ground-zero meat space for their content corpus.

> It's the ground-zero meat space for their content corpus What do mean with this sentence and content corpus?? That burning man matches their DNA?

Are you being purposefully obtuse? He's saying that one could make the argument that meeting new people at the epicenter of your prospective user's culture would help growth ultimately. This is also referred to as "boots on the ground" marketing.