SoundCloud Lays Off Nearly Half Its Staff, Closes Two Offices (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: SoundCloud is cutting about 40 percent of its staff in a cost-cutting move the digital music service says will give it a better financial footing to compete against larger rivals Spotify and Apple. SoundCloud, which in January said it was at risk of running out of money, informed staff on Thursday that 173 jobs would be eliminated. It had 420 employees. The company's operations will be consolidated at its headquarters in Berlin and another office in New York. Offices in San Francisco and London will be shut.

"We need to ensure our path to long-term, independent success," Alex Ljung, the company's co-founder and chief executive officer, said in a blog post published on SoundCloud's website. He said the company has doubled its revenue over the past 12 months -- without providing specifics -- and that the cuts put it on a path to profitability.

Comments

Wait so

[Anonymous Coward]

A cloud based music service doesn't need an office in five of the most expensive cities in the world?

Re:Wait so

[Anonymous Coward]

A cloud based music service doesn't need an office in five of the most expensive cities in the world?

OMG! Who knew???

But seriously, this is the problem with so many companies today. And 420 employees? Doing what?

Re:Wait so

[lucm]

having an office in an expensive city is the only way you can get mediocre leftover talent at minibar price.

Re:Wait so

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently Twitter does. From the Twitter web site:

"We have over 35 offices around the world, and each one reflects the regional and cultural spirit of the cities they're in. Atlanta's conference rooms are named after southern hip-hop icons, local artists paint giant murals in our New York office, and Sydney has a panoramic view of the city and harbor from the 39th floor (make sure you check out the sunset). Explore below to see all our offices and the job openings available."

I can't figure out why they aren't making money.

Re: Wait so

[Anonymous Coward]

20 programmers, 10 accountants, 10 managers, 100 marketing millennials and 280 HR people ensuring that there are a sufficient variety of transgender bathrooms for the millennial marketing staff.

Get ready people.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just the beginning. We're in Dot-Com Bubble 2.0: Web Services Edition. Get ready for the collapse.

The problem with free

[Anonymous Coward]

SoundCloud hosts music uploaded by indie content creators with very generous licenses. Their revenue stream seems to be audio and visual advertisements, a subscription service to listen ad free, and a service for creators to upload more music.

The problem is that any downloadable song is immediately ripped and uploaded to YouTube under "free music aggregator" accounts, which YouTube then gets the ads revenue.

I'm not surprised SoundCloud can't make any money.

Re:The problem with people

[aevan]

That would be too bad.

One thing I love about soundcloud is the waveform 'position bar' with tagged comments. When a band hosts XFDs there, you can easily, visually skim the album and check the samples for each song in the mix. You can quickly can determine if you want to buy the album or not that way. I find it a lot more convenient than some mp3 or youtube version.

On the other hand, searching for stuff on the site I find a horrid experience.

420 Employees?

[DontBeAMoran]

Divide that number by ten and then it will make sense.

Berliner Hipsters with no Business Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry guys this was just waiting to happen. Every start-up needs a "how do we make money" component in their model. Soundcloud never had one and have never managed to develop one.