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SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

techcrunch.com

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Re: SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

#111

Post by k-mcgrady »

yellowapple wrote: post #54

"Employees told us the company is “a shitshow,” with a lack of product direction, talent leaving and employees secretly using Spotify." Weird. I never really thought about SoundCloud and Spotify being actual competitors. I've always felt that SoundCloud did a lot better with indie/obscure artists, remixes, and the whole "soundclown" meme genre, whereas Spotify did a lot better with commercial/mainstream artists and a…

If you haven't seen it checkout Soundcloud GO. Essentially they pivoted to a Spotify competitor a couple of years ago but they still have the old, non-subscription version of Soundcloud available too.

Re: SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

#112

Post by avian »

sarreph wrote: post #6

For all those looking to make a SoundCloud clone: What is HN's opinion on its failings (from a user perspective) — i.e. how would you make SoundCloud better right now? Also interested to hear those who can balance with commercial viability.

I'm probably not the typical user, since I like to listen to music off-line. One thing that annoyed me about SoundCloud is that I often come across music on YouTube that has "download at SoundCloud" links. However, the SoundCloud "download" button always seemed to be a kind of a lottery. Sometimes it was there, sometimes you needed to log-in, more often than not it was nowhere to be found.

I understand that it's not in SoundCloud's interest to offer downloads and these days I just use youtube-dl. But apparently (at least at some point in time) it gave musicians the impression that it will allow their music to be downloaded.

Re: SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

#114

Post by chedabob »

eggpy wrote: post #41

> employees secretly using Spotify. Well yeah. There's not even competition there. And shouldn't be really, they are fundamentally different platforms.

Probably unaware it exists like everyone else. SoundCloud Go has been so poorly marketed.

Up until a few weeks ago, I only ever saw it mentioned on tracks where I could only listen to a sample. On my feed right now, the only link to it is in the overflow menu on the top navigation. Meanwhile, SoundCloud Pro has a big advert which takes up about 1/6th of the page.

Re: SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

#115

Post by pavlov »

jbb67 wrote: post #110

How can a website that lets people upload music files and comment on them, and play the music POSSIBLY need $170 MILLION to operate? I just don't get what they could possibly need that amount of money for.

Some random guesses:

* Business development teams for the Nth media company collaboration scheme * App development teams for the Nth iOS app redesign * Back-end and ops teams for the Nth overwrought storage architecture * Front-end teams to explore rewrites in the Nth proposed in-house JS/CSS framework * Operations people to keep the aforementioned people paid and fed

Re: SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

#116

Post by narrowtux »

wyager wrote: post #36
mful wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also full of dramatic, unsubstantiated claims such as: > Now staff morale is in the toilet, the user experience is a mess, the subscription models are unappealing, competitors are growing rapidly and musicians are fleeing to other upload platform. I really thought TechCrunch was getting better, but man this is bad journalism. It's like a hit piece in a high school newspaper.

To be fair, the UX is a mess. The mobile experience is horrible and always tries to drag you to the app (which is not great), and SC is constantly trying to push the "social" aspect. I can't filter out "shares" or whatever from my feed, which means instead of listening to the artists I like, I end up listening to a bunch of random crap they share.

What irked me about that one was that the UX being a mess can't possibly be only caused by the layoff woes 2 weeks ago.

Re: SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

#117

Post by programLyrique »

ipsum2 wrote: post #29

Shameless plug: if you or your friends have important data on SoundCloud, check out my free service to back it up: https://scupper.io .

It does not seem to save the associated images (404 Not Found on the images on the webpage with the saved soundfiles).

Re: SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

#118

Post by _pmf_ »

jbb67 wrote: post #110

How can a website that lets people upload music files and comment on them, and play the music POSSIBLY need $170 MILLION to operate? I just don't get what they could possibly need that amount of money for.

Licensing music. As to the reasoning behind considering licensing music, then giving it away for free to your customers to be a wise business decision, I don't quite follow their strategy.

Re: SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

#120

Post by thirdsun »

caoilte wrote: post #93
esaym wrote: post #3

> Now it’s asking investors for $169.5 million at a pre-money enterprise valuation of just $150 million Ouch. I hope they get the money. I really don't want it to go away. I have not found an alternative that has so many 1+ hour long megamixes :(

I've always got my mixes from mixcloud. Never really saw what differentiated soundcloud.

As someone who uses both platforms and actually prefers Mixcloud as a product, the user base is simply not there. I see much more engagement on Soundcloud.

Maybe it's different for other creators, artists, DJs, but I'd guess that's a very common experience when comparing both services.

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