Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 227 posts

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#101

Post by dna_polymerase »

adventured wrote: post #42
kevinherron wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I know like every new car comes with a trial but I didn’t realize people actually activated it.

Even more impressive than the market cap previously referenced is their actual business is vastly superior to Spotify. Sirius 2019: $7.8b in sales, $1.7b operating income Spotify 2019: $6.7b in sales, -$73m operating income Spotify's market cap is supported by a fantasy that one day, somehow, if they get big enough they might generate a real profit to support their Wile E. Coyote valuation (don't look down). So for e…

Spotify has solid user growth, and just invested heavily in the podcast ecosystem. Also they just reintroduced 3-month trials for their subscriptions which slows conversion and therefore revenue growth. Of all the tech companies out there, I think Spotify ranks among the more solid ones.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#102

Post by nikisweeting »

malthaus wrote: post #97

Not sure what to think of this. SoundCloud has run its course and should just die, leaving space for a new player. There are some around but they can't gain critical traction due to the stickiness of SoundCloud despite having a product which has increasingly gotten worse over time. For an audio platform, the audio quality is subpar. Terrible discovery. Too many bots & marketing-spammers. No direct monetization scheme…

I completely disagree on almost every point. As a daily SoundCloud user, the discovery is a mile above and beyond every other platform I've tried, including Apple Music and Spotify. SoundClouds weekly "The Upload" playlist has more good music in it than any other automatic playlist I follow, I cant even remember the last time it had a song on it I didn't like. I'm not sure how some people get such a different experience, maybe only long-time users get the good discovery experience because they've provided the algorithms with more data about their preferences?

My one gripe is that you can only follow 2,000 people! WTH Soundcloud, why place such an arbitrary maximum? It's clearly not a hard limit because occasionally I can glitch my way up to more followers by clicking the button dozens of times (I'm at 2010 now).

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#103

Post by nikisweeting »

mojuba wrote: post #100
seppin wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's the only music streaming service that takes discovery seriously, and it's the only one I use.

Exactly, I love their recommendations based on my likes, love The Upload section. I wonder what algorithms they use. They are pretty good.

Their "The Upload" playlist is consistently the source of some of my favorite music on the internet, it almost never has a song I don't like. Whichever engineers worked on it deserve a raise.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#104

Post by joezydeco »

subhro wrote: post #90
briandear wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a very big deal for aviation. My plane uses XM in-cockpit weather products.

But ADS-B is catching up and quickly. I understand there are a few additional layers in SXM and the resolution is better when looking at 200+NM. I find SXM weather to be kind of extortion because they use publicly available data and sell it just for packaging it nice.

because they use publicly available data and sell it just for packaging it nice.

Aren't you missing the part where they're sending it to you 10,000 feet in the air via a satellite constellation? That's a little more than "packaging". You're free to access the public data by any other means you choose.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#105

Post by Plyphon_ »

morrbo wrote: post #84
golergka wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. Mixcloud does a much better job at this.

Mixcloud is great however the people in charge seem to be intent on killing the platform with bad ideas. I say this as a huge fan and a paying customer (premium user). The android app is horrible. They used to have 10-30 minutes of cache time, now they have 0. You go under a tunnel, on the tube, whatever, and your stream cuts out. Also lots of UI bugs. This might have gotten better but I wouldn't know as I am on an o…

> You have to pay to rewind stuff apparently

This is true. It is also the worst piece of hostile-UX I've ever seen. I'd love to have seen the Product Designer and Product Manager tie this one back to revenue forecasts. Who knows, maybe its a huge converter?

It just seems overly hostile to me, as if thats the only way they could think to increase revenue - instead of, you know, working on their core value proposition.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#106

Post by wcarss »

hypertexthero wrote: post #66
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #35

When I was a truck driver, Satellite Radio was practically a necessity. Sure I loaded up my ipod with music, but the selection was too damn limited and I would tire of hearing the same songs over & over again. The best case scenario for FM radio (when you would finally find something that you could tolerate) was 1 hour. 1 hour of variety to stave off bordem and try to save your sanity. The effective range of the FM s…

You might enjoying tuning in to Radio Garden: https://radio.garden/

this might change my life. thanks!

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#107

Post by 52-6F-62 »

mojuba wrote: post #59

I feel like I'm in the minority of those who love SoundCloud. It's one the very few places for indie music makers and DJs to showcase their work that otherwise may not necessarily be published via the official publishing channels. That includes e.g. long running DJ mixes, not exactly the type of material for the official release bureaucracy and associated costs. The only problem with SoundCloud is that instead of fol…

I swear SC is the only place I can find even a couple of Ethan Johns songs to stream while I'm at work.

It's got its niche for sure.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#108

Post by foxX »

madeofpalk wrote: post #28
cyberferret wrote: post #5

And they still haven't fixed the bug that doesn't let you drag and drop to rearrange the songs in your 'Spotlight' list on your profile in Chrome. I reported it about 6 years ago, and repeatedly re-report it at least every 12 months. Hopefully some of this $75M goes towards a competent javascript programmer for their frontend.

> Hopefully some of this $75M goes towards a competent javascript programmer for their frontend hmmm

Maybe they should give their developers a 3rd MacBook. One MacBook for the office, one MacBook for home office and one MacBook for installing Chrome and testing the site there. Just throwing ideas around...

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#109

Post by zippergz »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #64
UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #35

When I was a truck driver, Satellite Radio was practically a necessity. Sure I loaded up my ipod with music, but the selection was too damn limited and I would tire of hearing the same songs over & over again. The best case scenario for FM radio (when you would finally find something that you could tolerate) was 1 hour. 1 hour of variety to stave off bordem and try to save your sanity. The effective range of the FM s…

I actually find Sirius frustrating for long road trips or commutes; most of the channels repeat their content every 6 or 7 or 8 hours. I often find the same programming on my home journey that was on when I was on the way in. Many news type channels like BBC endlessly repeat every hour. Having a pile of podcasts and audiobooks ready at hand makes long drives on ski trips much more tolerable to me... But I do keep the…

When I'm on long enough trips to start hitting repetition, I change channels periodically. There are a handful I like, so rotating isn't a bad thing. But yes, I do wish each channel had more songs in rotation at any given time.

Re: SoundCloud raises $75M from SiriusXM

#110

Post by muglug »

simias wrote: post #83
mojuba wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This partially explains the success behind YouTube I thought the success of YouTube was largely due to their low bars for quality of content. Put simply, they allow all kinds of crap as long as it generates views. Vimeo's model is quality content from indie producers, actually they are similar to SoundCloud in some ways. Think about this: for example NASA has plenty of quality audio and video materials, where shoul…

I think YouTube's success is mainly that they were first, there were always free to use so there was no reason for anybody to look elsewhere. It's hard to compete against free and established services. You basically have to find a killer feature (and hope that the established service will be slow to copy it) or pay people to do the switch. >Not everyone wants to be on the Internet's sewage system that's YouTube. Yet…

> I think YouTube's success is mainly that they were first

Actually, Vimeo's first videos[0] were uploaded a month before YouTube's[1].

[0] https://vimeo.com/15 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw

Post reply on HN