SoundCloud faces do-or-die vote by investors

Reminds me of the financial crisis when banks that were losing billions would claim to be "Awash with liquidity." Once the CEOs admit weakness, the sharks circle tighter.

Two years ago, folks still said they'd close shop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11079864

And that's the problem -- the CEO wasted a ton of time and resources trying to create a Spotify competitor that just burned resources.

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.

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

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.

Litigation warchest

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

Try https://hearthis.at

What about the Internet Archive?

Youtube is about it, YT Music app for mobile (all unfortunately)

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 photo than the SC CEO at Burning Man.

Creating SoundCloud is more than 99.x% of people ever achieve, including me, the author, and the editor of this shameless excuse of an article. SoundCloud is obviously beloved by many. If they don't find a way to get those people to pay, they're in good company.

At least they're not selling to AOL.

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.

edit: Apparently the photo was changed within the hour. According to Google Cache, this is what was in the article:

http://imgur.com/a/N8OR9

http://archive.is/hkmkY

----

What was the original caption/photo? Right now, it says:

http://imgur.com/a/N5EcV

> SoundCloud CEO Alex Ljung would be replaced if the company receives the new funding

FWIW, in other articles, it's been insinuated that Ljung went off to Burning Man at a time when Rome was burning:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/inside-the-storm-at-soundcl...

> By August 2014, it was abundantly clear that the SoundCloud’s advertising program, which would allow artists and labels to collect royalties, would not launch as planned. Despite Toig’s promises, not a single major label had agreed to a deal. The project launched with a eleventh-hour pivot to focus on independent creators, with Toig later apologizing at an all-hands meeting for failing to sign the majors...Ljung assured everyone in attendance that the label arrangements would eventually get done. A few days later, he flew to California and went off the grid. It was time for Burning Man.

Further down in the article:

> ...The stalled deals also affected internal operations at SoundCloud headquarters in Berlin. Though the $150 million round never closed, managers had been instructed to double the size of the company’s 150-person engineering team.Meanwhile, Ljung continued to travel the world. In May 2015, he spoke at a Burning Man–esque festival outside of Las Vegas called Further Future. In June, he showed up in an ad campaign for Italian luxury company Salvatore Ferragamo. When SoundCloud employees from around the world flew to Berlin for an August retreat, he was nowhere to be found.

Not only am I not surprised that the CEO of a music-based company is at Burning Man, I fully expect him to show up at SXSW as well. Anything less would almost seem like a dereliction of duty.

These press prostitutes know exactly what they're doing. Thank God for services like archive.is because otherwise they just blackhole everything scummy they do.

http://archive.is/j8cns

Tweeted to the author:

https://twitter.com/alanhamlett/status/895725907356205056

I agree. I do not see how going to a festival is such a bad thing to do. It's actually a good thing to be able to still do something in your free time that you like..

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

The tone is converging on unhinged.

Or make a true backup by downloading it all with e.g. youtube-dl instead.

"By continuing, you agree that you own the music associated with the account and give us permission to host it."

So, this services simply downloads the files and then add on your server? How is this helping me back it up?

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

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 support specific content producers/artists? I don't think a blanket monthly subscription is really a good fit but personally I would pay 1-5$ / month for specific artists/content providers and follow only them.

There's no real evidence that there is a profitable business model for streaming music except insofar as subsidies from other parts of the business make sense overall. Just because a lot of people like something doesn't mean that there is a path to making money with it.

I don't have strong feelings about what's good and bad about their UI, etc. Their main failing is that they're probably not going to exist much longer unless Apple, Google, or someone along those lines snaps them up at fire sale prices and is OK with losing money on them.

Focus on DJ sets, remixes, hip-hop/electronica producers like others have said. Don't try to be Spotify.

I’ve commented extensively on this before if you check my comment history but basically they need to go back to their roots. No commercial music. No copyrighted music. It should be a great place and community for indie and unsigned artists to post content and they can monetise it using paid artist accounts as they originally did (pay for more storage, better listener stats, etc). Commercial music means licensing and lawyers and paying money you can’t afford. Stay away from it. You can’t compete with Spotify et al. Maybe try to implement the tech Moxcloud used to allow DJ mixes but I wouldn’t go further than that commercially.

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?

Many are admittedly hard challenges, but;

  > Give me a non-browser client.
  > Make the browser client not leak memory.
  > Don't interleave Soundcloud Go previews with free music.
  > Give me reasonable discovery of similar music.

Until Go happened, Soundcloud was my everyday work listening. Now I only use it for long mixes that I can't find (or am too lazy to find) elsewhere.

The challenge for any clone isn't going to be features, it's going to be content.

Don't make a business out of it, at least not directly. Make an open source, federated clone, ideally with something like GNUSocial driving it - something that doesn't go down under the pressure of endless bullshit DMCA claims or investor pressure. Sell your services as a consultant maintaining it for artists who can't get the technical bits down.

We have got to quit trusting commercial entities with our culture. They are not good stewards of it.

+ soundcloud redesign

+ merge the same shared track > bob shared "sounds01" > randy shared "sounds01" {at a later time} >>merge names if the same track is shared > Bob & Randy shared "sounds01" >>ui animations if in real time change of merge, otherwise don't animate

+ make an artist collaboration area > see Reestablishing Groups/Clubs

+ different subscription models > free artist account > paid artist account [removes ads + more upload space] ~ > free listener account > paid listener account [removes ads + more playlists] ~ > advertiser account [design fill-form ads that link directly to soundcloud track/album (all ads are in the same style, text and links.)]

+ less hassle create playlists - ui > see old soundcloud, pre-redesign

+ no hidden ui buttons [download, buy etc]

+ having another subcategory called 'reposted/shared' along side tracks, etc. > toggle reposts on paid accounts

+ groups/clubs readded > Reestablishing Groups/Clubs to make soundcloud more open to collaboration and like minded playlists. > Group playlists

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.

I would pay a premium price to stream in better quality and I cannot for my life figure out why no one has ever suggested this in any of the many recent SoundCloud threads or why SoundCloud hasn't thought of this themselves. But I guess that the two are connected – and that I really am the only person who would pay for this.

SoundCloud uses an encoding algorithm that is extremely bad even for the lousy 128 Kbps they are streaming in. Why should a dedicated music service feature worse audio quality than YouTube? Of course I would pay to improve this during the six hours I spend on SoundCloud each and every working day.

Speaking as a music creator, I like using Soundcloud (for example) to share a new mix with colleagues / clients, who can easily comment at specific times on the recording. Or to share A/B comparisons between different settings. And all of this can be on private URLs shared with only the intended parties.

I don't use it to find new music to "just" listen to, and I never have. But I would happily pay to use it for what I do get out of it. I haven't paid for it yet, because their free tier has so far covered everything I needed...

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.

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!

Get copyright laws changed to allow free sampling, as long as the new work has a creative identity that is distinct from all the samples it contains.

I have been using SoundCloud almost exclusively for the better part of 7 years. I have playlists (eg., Personal Favourites for <Month> `<Year>) dating all the way back to early 2011. It's the /only/ online music service I subscribe to. Zero interest in Spotify, don't care for Apple Music, and even other services (eg., Mixcloud, Bandcamp, Audiomack, etc) miss the point of being driven by a community.

It's a service where, at this point, I cannot part ways with, simply because there are zero alternatives that either emulate its flow (twitter like feed), or house the same blossoming artists that go on to become big (eg., Post Malone, Don Monique, Bryon Tiller, Chance the Rapper, Joe Kay, etc) names.

But, SoundCloud has its issues, and its Go+ service (subscriber since day 1) is a missed opportunity. On its service, there are a many issues with SC.

1. SoundCloud (not a developer, but assuming) seems to have chosen poor engineering choices from the top. SoundCloud just chose to not solve it once it became too hard on their database, including when they famously had issues with being early adopters of Mongo. Their most recent frontend HTML5 rewrite chews up CPU usage, and it just hasn't changed in recent years.

2. SoundCloud Go and Go+ were blatant cash grabs. I purchased it purely to bypass ads, but also because I believe in the /concept/ of the service, but have lost faith in the company some time ago. Content Producers would have paid more if only discovery hadn't gone downhill, which may have heightened

3. Despite the iOS app being updated every other week, it seems as though it /actually/ hasn't been updated in years. You cant click "Like" and then "Repost" within 1-2 seconds of each other before the app just decides to crash. The app even lacks basic controls and makes it impossible to queue up songs /unless/ it's put into a playlist, but then you have to discovery > listen > add to playlist > flip to playlist... it's asinine

4. Artist Engagement is a /joke/. Just to "buy" or "download" a track means you're walking into a wall of questionable sites, and a plethora of social media logins. "LOGIN TO DOWNLOAD! NOW RETWEET! NOW LIKE! ALMOST THERE! NOW SNAP AT US". This isn't SoundCloud per se, but they implicitly allow this to happen. They could have easily required you to follow the artist before downloading directly to solve at least part of the problem. Especially considering you can just use a Chrome Extension to download the song...

5. Music discovery is pathetically trash. The further you drive down the rabbit hole of discovery, the slower the experience becomes. Discovery is the /core concept/ of SoundCloud since there is so much underground talent just waiting to be discovered. This was the entire point of SC, and they failed at it.

6. Copyright issues plague people to the point of marring them from becoming 'djs' or potential artists. It also seems like their ability to work with artists in general is just utter garbage.

7. The UI is /garbage/. It needs to be updated. It's almost like 10 teams at SC worked on it after a night of drinking and throwing up. The simplicity of discovery should be the focal point, but it seems like it's a bug when you want to find new music.

8. The power of SC is the community. It's a feed of new music, even music people you follow are reposting. While "The Upload" is a great idea, it's buried deep behind a sluggish UI.

9. Queueing took far too long to release. It's especially stupid considering that if you dive into an artists page, while having an album queued, playing their song will wipe the playlist in favour of the artists. Come on.

I can go on for /hours/. But, I hope SC stays around, a new CEO comes in, and the product is not only rebuilt, but redesigned from the ground up.

Please don't die. I have nobody else.

I have been wanting something like Youtube Red for Soundcloud, where my listens directly correspond to payments for the creators. I had hoped that Soundcloud Go would be like this but I believe most of my money goes to record labels.

Pardon my ignorance but why would someone clone a business that tried for years and failed? Wouldn't it be like cloning Groupon?

Volume control on embedded player.

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.

That's part of the problem. They focused all their attention on making a Spotify competitor, when the core principle of what SC unique is the community and a vast underground culture of unknown artists hoping to make it big.

The two are similar in that they're online streaming services, but insofar as everything else, not even close.

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.

Could you elaborate? I was under the impression that SoundCloud is one of the few platforms that treats musicians well, and lets fans discover really small bands/djs.

I feel like they had the opposite problem. They only focused on fan-service, at the expense of profitability. The reason the music industry hates it is because it removes them as gatekeepers. Soundcloud gave a platform to musicians that allowed them to gain exposure to audiences without having to bend the knee to LA or NY.

Same here. The EDM catalog was/is? awesome.

devil's advocate, why not youtube, or reddit, and if downloading is a problem, mega?

Give us a try, mixcloud.com

I honestly don't understand the hate. If you're going to DV me at least take a sec to read the thread or let me know what your issue is. The thread has some good responses from Juan; that's really the only reason I posted it here. I thought of going decentralized because (at the time) I loved soundcloud. I used it as an artist and also as a listener. I've been around long enough to know that their model was not sustainable and eventually all the great content would disappear. Decentralized makes sense for something like SC. Let the people who find it valuable share in the costs of serving it a la bit torrent.