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

SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 131 posts

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

#61

Post by vit05 »

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.

Is there any business being the middleman among artists? Could have a musicians-only option, similar to IMDBpro, be monetized in SoundClound platform?

A lyricist auction their lyrics among some artists, musicians sell their music to advertisers who are producing a commercial. Musicians selling to filmmakers. Dj buying the rights to remix some songs. I know there are already several businesses doing this, many separate. But SoundClound could dominate this market by having a worldwide scale. And for being the first choice of niche artists.

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

#62

Post by unclebucknasty »

reillyse wrote: post #2

What a messed up article. I don't know this CEO but using a picture taken at a festival two years ago as proof of incompetence seems very cheap.

Haven't read TC in years, but is this type of "article" now the norm there?

The tone is converging on unhinged.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

phreeza wrote: post #43
thinbeige wrote: post #35

> If it can’t find funding or a buyer, SoundCloud could vaporize, destroying its massive archive of user-uploaded music, podcasts and other sounds. Wrong. If Soundcloud goes bankrupt then the state tries to find a buyer for a new SoundCloud with a virgin cap table. So Soundcloud won't disappear whatever happens.

Are you sure that is what happens, given that SoundCloud is a German company? Afaik a kind of administrator gets appointed by the Court who can take over administration of the company, not sure about the cap table though.

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by pmoriarty »

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.

They need to find a much better way to let their listeners discover new music. SoundCloud groups used to be an alright way to do that, and when SC ditched them they really crippled themselves, and now I as a small, independent music producer don't even bother to upload my music to SC because it gets zero listens since there's virtually no way for anyone who might appreciate it to discover it.

Back when SC had groups, I didn't have a lot of listens, but it wasn't zero, and some people actually liked my music. Now SC is a ghost town for me, so why even bother?

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

#65

Post by syrrim »

bad_user wrote: post #30
nxsynonym wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go back to basics. Keep it focused on community facing artists, remixes, dj sets, etc. From what I've seen they suffered most from lack of direction, weak leadership, and no real business plan from the beginning. It seems (correct me if I'm wrong) it started as a hobby project and got twisted into a SaaS model that didn't fit it's purpose or audience. As far as monetization - why not have a Patreon-esque system of su…

> why not have a Patreon-esque system You've lost me there. You can't, because people don't pay and don't want to pay, unless they are forced to, as in there's actual scarcity (i.e. no way to easily get that content from anywhere else).

Clearly it can work, because it works for Patreon. It also works for twitch, who allow people to "subscribe" to streamers they like. This entails paying $5 a month (half to the streamer, half to twitch) to receive exclusive chatting rights, special "emotes", and other non-essential features. People do it not because they want access to the special features, but because they want to support the streamer. It seems that people are adverse to paying only when it is on an-item-by-item basis, but are not adverse to it in general.

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

#66

Post by 15charlimit »

"Soundcloud is fine and will be around for years, stop backing up all of the music".

Didn't the CEO say something along those lines ~2 weeks ago when they forced the archive.org folks to stop pulling down a backup copy of everything? Funny how quickly that was proven to be BS.

Not that anyone should be surprised by this outcome.

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

#67

Post by pbhjpbhj »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #17
cbhl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the Internet Archive?

An organization would need to be formed that existed and operated outside of jurisdictions friendly to copyright law. Maybe Turkey?

Turkey definitely are signatories to international copyright treaties. Last i looked only a few places weren't including Papua New Guinea.

TRIPs and Berne are probably the main ones.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

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

#68

Post by gist »

matt4077 wrote: post #8
reillyse wrote: post #2

What a messed up article. I don't know this CEO but using a picture taken at a festival two years ago as proof of incompetence seems very cheap.

Indeed–that image caption serves absolutely no purpose except to beat on someone who is at a low point anyway. And it doesn't even make sense! Taking a vacation every now and then is likely to improve productivity, and for SoundCloud specifically, it seems almost necessary to go to Burning Man and mingle. The criticism is especially rich coming from a guy who looks at least twice as stoned in his official TechCrunch…

Bias actually makes for interesting reading and clickbait. That is what it's all about. It's not about being fair and balanced. And actually given that the truth does not matter to the vast majority of people reading Techcrunch (or honestly any publication) I am not sure it even would be a smart business strategy. People watch wrestling and they know it's fixed. People read fiction. This is another version of it.

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

#69

Post by danso »

mful wrote: post #25
reillyse wrote: post #2

What a messed up article. I don't know this CEO but using a picture taken at a festival two years ago as proof of incompetence seems very cheap.

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.

The OP probably should have been a link to Axios, which is the outlet that broke the news; TC is just reblogging it and adding its own commentary/context: https://www.axios.com/soundcloud-asks-investors-to-support-r...

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

#70

Post by pwenzel »

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 am taking this event as reminder to go back to my own self-hosted website with an RSS feed. It doesn't have the complete social factor offered by Soundcloud, but hey, it's my own!
Post reply on HN