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Comment by oelmekki | Hacker News Reader

Seems to me like completely changing up the product was the previous direction (trying to squeeze in some kind of spotify-like product), and the article mentions explicitly the new CEO want to get back to the core value of the service.

Of course, we'll see what they mean by that and how it will be executed, but it sounds like good news, actually.

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That's the problem tho, isn't it? The core value of the service was great for fans, but not for any sort of business and certainly not for the labels (without whom SC cannot exist and hope to make any money whatsoever).

Why does SoundCloud need labels? They just need a way to make money with independent musicians.

I also believe it can make money on independent musicians. But can independent musicians money scale to VC expectations?

Well at this point the expectations are a little lower. "Anything but going all the way to zero" seems like the current tone.

> "Anything but going all the way to zero" seems like the current tone.

You don't invest in a company without expectations of ROI

I'm not a VC so I may be totally wrong here, but it seems to me that what they expect to scale is not revenue, but valuation (providing further investors match this valuation). Should Soundcloud revenue raises slowly but they do an IPO, I guess investors would be perfectly fine.

Edit : of course, it seems their doing a downround, so those expectations are not in good shape either.

I think it's tricky specifically with DJ culture in that if I make a remix or a mashup and that includes somebody else's content, that content needs to be licensed.

When a DJ is spinning in a club or venue however using someone else's content is covered by the venue in the form of fees paid to ASCAP, BMI or some other such publishing rights society.

> When a DJ is spinning in a club or venue however using someone else's content is covered by the venue in the form of fees paid to ASCAP, BMI or some other such publishing rights society.

This is not true in many parts of the world.

Care to elaborate where in the world artists don't have access to performance rights societies or copyright collectives?

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_rights_organisatio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_copyright_collection_s...

https://www.ascap.com/help/international/affiliated-foreign-...

Its up to the artist to register with a PRO or to affiliate with a publisher that will do so for them. ASCAP despite the A in the name will collect performance rights worldwide and anyone that meets the basic requirements is welcome to join regardless of what country you live in. See:

http://blog.songtrust.com/uncategorized/ask-songtrust-publis...

The problem is much of the independent content like remixes touches major label copyrights.

Without a label licensing deal, soundcloud is not worth buying due the risk of a lawsuit.

Then some enterprising lawyer should arrange a class action lawsuit on behalf of one-off independent musicians against the labels for those labels interfering in the independent musicians' ability to exercise their copyrights.

SC existed fine without labels. Most of the music underground that SC originally hosted for was micro-labels and independent producers. Soudncloud as a platform was NEVER a good fit for mainstream music as published by Hollywood labels, and I think much of the site's woes are because they tried to make it fit.

Soundcloud needs a blanket "no music published by a major label is permitted" There are of course copyright issues on remixes/whatnot but those really needs to be worked out in a court of law, in favor of producers.

>"Seems to me like completely changing up the product was the previous direction (trying to squeeze in some kind of spotify-like product), ..."

Wasn't this a necessity though due to some of the content hosted by SC being owned by the 4 major record labels?

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