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

201–210 of 331 posts

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#201

Post by elmar »

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…

Dalton Caldwell at YC Startup School 2010 did a great presentation on the subject talking exactly about the nuances of the music industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTOlrN5-UGU

In October 2010, Caldwell spoke at Y Combinator’s Startup School event at Stanford University about the failures of imeem and of the challenges still facing the music industry. At the event, Caldwell delivered a cautionary message for entrepreneurs interested in music startups. Caldwell criticized major music labels for holding too much power, focusing mainly on the industry’s licensing deals for content. He said that the current state of the industry made success for startups bleak.

While some commentators praised Caldwell for his harsh but realistic insight on the digital music startup industry, many critics (notably David Hyman, CEO and founder of MOG) felt that the lessons learned from Caldwell’s experience with imeem did not accurately portray the industry as a whole.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#202

Post by Briel »

There's a lot of focus on how they failed: strayed from their non-label musician roots.

But how would they have been able to monetize?

* Let fans support their favorite musicians a la Patreon and take a % from the donations?

* Partner with music labels to help them scout their next upcoming talents?

* Help musicians book shows at venues and take a % of the sales?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#203

Post by roberto »

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.

They do by listening to ads.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#204

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#205

Post by jerrylives »

jameskegel wrote: post #172
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…

It is funny you mention Bandcamp as your flagship example considering how much 1993 duct tape is holding it together. You cannot compare the UI and tech of the two; Bandcamp has neglected the same Courier New interface since they were a startup. SoundCloud engineering is worlds ahead. They were one of the biggest proponents and pioneers of containerized microservice architecture. They took a lot of beatings so that w…

How about this for inspiring? https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/01/24/everything-is-terrific...

Bandcamp, with its "Courier New" interface, has delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in value to its users and artists. And it's still growing.

That's cute that soundcloud made a bunch of blog posts about their super elite containerized microserviced architecture. How's their business doing? Who's making money on there besides industry plants?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#206

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

cupcakestand wrote: post #195
skewart wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure that's true. Their key problem is that they didn't understand how much value there is in up-and-coming, amateur, and underground music. The record labels only have power when it comes to their catalogue. SoundCloud could have truly disrupted the labels by providing an alternative way to promote, monetize, and discover music. But they somehow got off that track.

How should this work? Once somebody is trending on such platforms, labels will come, give them tons of money, a contract and take over. And take them away from these platforms as well.

They'll give them an advance as bait for an exploitative and crappy contract which may well be run in a dishonest way.

Given that most sales are downloads or streams now, the only thing big labels can bring to the table is a nuclear level of publicity. And by definition, that's going to be reserved for a tiny handful of multimillion-selling household names.

Today's smaller bands and artists - which will be the majority - get no particular benefit from signing to a big label.

They may get some smaller benefits from signing to a smaller niche label, but they certainly won't get a big pile of cash from that.

The situation is similar to book publishing, where a tiny handful of massively popular signed authors get most of the publicity and the cash, but there's a solid underclass of midlist writers who do better with self-publishing, because they earn more from direct sales and - ironically - have a more secure career too.

There was a massive opportunity for SoundCloud to become Amazon/Kindle for Musicians.

MySpace had that space for a while but lost it. BandCamp is close, but doesn't quite make it because the default artist pages suck, and it sees itself as a store, not so much as a marketing and PR outlet that also happens to sell downloads and physical media.

SoundCloud could have won that space, but apparently SoundCloud's management never understood that there's more money in hosting associated services - web pages, mailshots, blogs, and so on - than there is in providing hosting for audio files.

In fact YouTube seems to be quietly taking over for basic track hosting, with the added benefit of video. There's no reaction feature on the tracks, but I'm not convinced that was ever an essential USP on SoundCloud.

But I still think someone else with VC backing could win this space and clean up.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#207

Post by epa »

lupin3 wrote: post #110
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…

I agree their pricing decisions were not in line with their users. Soundcloud Go was poorly positioned, and their original premium tiers did not provide enough benefit for what they cost.

SoundCloud is far from 'failed' the service is still the go-to website for new music and I do not see a replacement at this time.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#208

Post by uhnuhnuhn »

jameskegel wrote: post #172
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…

It is funny you mention Bandcamp as your flagship example considering how much 1993 duct tape is holding it together. You cannot compare the UI and tech of the two; Bandcamp has neglected the same Courier New interface since they were a startup. SoundCloud engineering is worlds ahead. They were one of the biggest proponents and pioneers of containerized microservice architecture. They took a lot of beatings so that w…

"They ran their business into the ground, but they did it with such great tech!"

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#209

Post by keithpeter »

netheril96 wrote: post #198
keithpeter wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I thought that was amusing, the idea that Mr Toig's main complaint about his portrayal in the article was the mis-statement of his preferences for presentations gives you some idea of what it must have been like in the section of the business that he was responsible for (we don't know who provided the correction of course). A previous manager of mine insisted on all documents using 12pt Arial with 18pt line spac…

Maybe Mr Toig complained about many things, but the writers chose to only accept this correction.

I accept the point.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#210

Post by vec »

wolco wrote: post #180
skewart wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure that's true. Their key problem is that they didn't understand how much value there is in up-and-coming, amateur, and underground music. The record labels only have power when it comes to their catalogue. SoundCloud could have truly disrupted the labels by providing an alternative way to promote, monetize, and discover music. But they somehow got off that track.

And that is the big loss. Having a place where one could discover new music has so much value over being served the same songs by the same few artists

Does it though?

I'd like this to be true, but in practice it seems like most people (me included) strongly prefer hearing songs they already know most of the time, enjoy songs more with repetition, at least up to a point, and are more than willing to learn to like almost anything with high enough production value.

Some people are music snobs as a hobby and most go on discovery quests from time to time, but it honestly seems like most people most of the time want music they don't have to think too much about or devote too much attention to. Indie-only channels can't really deliver that.

Post reply on HN