Slashdot Mirror
SoundCloud Has Enough Money To Survive Only 80 Days, Report Claims (techcrunch.com)
Last week, SoundCloud announced it is cutting about 40 percent of its staff and closing two offices. Now, a report from TechCrunch claims "the layoffs only saved the company enough money to have runway 'until Q4' -- which begins in just 80 days." From the report: That seems to conflict with the statement Ljung released alongside the layoffs, which noted that, "With more focus and a need to think about the long term, comes tough decisions." The company never mentioned how short its cash would still last. We reached out to Ljung and SoundCloud for this story and PR responded to the request reiterating Ljung blog post. After being presented with the leaked information from the all-hands, SoundCloud PR admitted that, "We are fully funded into Q4," though it says it's in talks with potential investors. But further funding would require faith in SoundCloud that its own staff lacks. When asked about morale of the remaining team, one employee who asked to remain anonymous told TechCrunch "it's pretty shitty. Pretty somber. I know people who didn't get the axe are actually quitting. The people saved from this are jumping ship. The morale is really low."
We have YouTube.
Really?! Falling for the American get rich quick bullshit of Silicon Valley?!
I put you guys on a pedestal for being sober rational guys and you do this?! I thought Germans were rational industrious peoples - a bit uptight - but alright.
What next? You're gonna follow some crazy guy who's gonna want to kill millions based upon their religious affiliation?
I posted a couple "tracks" there, some audio captures of PC fan noises for fans that were misbehaving.
Soon after, I started receiving "likes" from various "accounts".
Then I started receiving SPAM PMs in soundcloud.
When a company starts padding their data, you know they're going down.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Before enrolling in an MBA program (or attempting to run a business without any training) try taking the following short quiz:
Question 1) Revenue should be
A) Greater than total expenses
B) Equal to total expenses
C) Less than total expenses
If you answered B or C you should probably reconsider your career choice of running a business.
If you answered A your business may still fail, but at least you've got a chance of success.
Should we be concerned about this? Is this a backend for something that people actually use?
Let me play it for you...
So from a financial POV it's more of an unSoundCloud?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I am pretty disappointed by this, actually. I really like listening to EDM mixes by a handful of DJs while I work or workout. I'm not much into the whole "social" bit, but its fantastic for an easy way to access quality music on a predictable schedule - weekly or monthly depending on the artist.
Now I might have to waste some time to find another $10/month service that has what I want. :(
With the technology available today, talented people can cook music up in their basement that rivals and exceeds what is commercially available. Soundcloud puts these people at your fingertips for free. It's got a huge pool of contributors and an interesting if imperfect interface. Even hugely respected artists like Aphex Twin use it to distribute unreleased tracks. For me though, I used the site a lot less once they got rid of groups. I suppose this bit into their revenue model somehow (though I can't think of a way). I can honestly say I would have considered paying for Soundcloud Go+ if they had kept groups, which made searching through new music by genre/location/whatever much easier.
The sale process was so bad I never figured out how to complete a purchase.
or so
Tons of artist's tracks are not there. Sure the listing is there, you can go to the song, but the second you hit play all you get is empty air.
I think they've had some bad hardware failures recently and are unable to restore many artists works.
Example: Only the songs that successfully play on my account are actually downloadable. The others are missing the link to download entirely (despite all of my works being made publicly available to download.)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Fake News, It was 50 days according to Reddit.
First there were loads of spambots, then they removed soundcloud groups without providing a credible alternative and completely ignored the distress that caused, and then the number of bots kept increasing. Basically they dug their own grave by completely ignoring all of my feedback for several years :)
On the other hand, I'm sure it's not easy getting money from a fairly low-ad platform in times where everyone expects major web services to be "free".
beyond that,you serioisly think the unpleasant spam accounts are from soundcloud?
They should have just created a method to donate 1$ per month subscription.
The fact is that if you like sound cloud there is no easy way to donate unless you become a pro user.
My money's on google. They have deep pockets and can integrate it with the close alternative of youtube. Apple is too pretentious to sully their hands and music service with independent music and spotify isn't turning profit with its core business (yet). As far as I'm concerend, Microsoft is completely out of the picture and if they bought Soundcloud, they would just Nokia the brand.
A company like soundcloud need only maybe 1 office at most and a staff of 5 to function effectively. Sounds like they used their investment funds poorly. I'll can take over if they want! Startups must run lean!
It's really a shame that they have been so far from monetization because for those who use it, it's really a great service. Whether it's listenning to mixes, publishing your sounds or seeking out new music to listen too, the Soundcloud user is a faithful one through and through. I know I would pay for my bandwith if it was super Cheap!! What if it was a paid only service. They would force the users to buy some bitcoins whatever and put them in a SC wallet. And then they can charge ridiculously minute amounts for tha actual bandwith you use. I like this better than the subscription model - A pay to play kinda thing Bottom line, Soundcloud has the potential to free up artists from publishers and stick it to the industry, it just needs a radical way of charging its users -> it just has to be really really cheap ;)
Every company only has X number of days until it has to shutdown, that's especially true if the revenues are smaller than expenses.
The question is really this: is the business sound enough to survive on its own *ever* or not? A business can be in a tough spot when it is doing a lot of investment and development that *hopefully* brings new revenue in the future. In those situations a business is burning money that it saved or borrowed, the question is: can a business survive at all once it gets through a hurdle like that?
This question is not addressed in the story.
You can't handle the truth.
If they send me a PM on SoundCloud, yeah, that's the spreading vector.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
And by "they" you don't mean Soundcloud itself. I hope. And even then, do you punch out your mailman when you get junkmail?
I don't get junk mail. Not since mailman's scars became permanent.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)