I am surprised that the majority of commenters believe that this marks the end of SoundCloud. SC just secured $170M in new funding with $100M revenue run rate. They have a product that many users and creators love. The new CEO is a Harvard Business School grad with experience as CEO of Vimeo, a similar media business. He brought the COO of Vimeo with him. If SC can reduce cost (not knowing what the drivers are, it is unclear how easy that is), they might be able to reach profitability quickly. This might be the start of operating SC like a real company by a real operating team.
"The new management should provide some additional confidence. I’d interviewed both Ljung and Wahlforss in the past, and neither had answers to the big questions facing SoundCloud about its product direction, business model, and the spurious copyright takedowns that have eroded its trust with musicians."
On the other hand, existing employees equity value is likely wiped out in the down round. They are underwater on strike price of options, face additional dilution from prior investors' anti-dilution provisions and now liquidation multiples/preference from investors.
In fact Vimeo's pricing and core audience (largely-independent semi-pro uploaders of high-quality media content for promotional purposes) is identical to SoundCloud's. And Vimeo recently doubled down on that model, abandoning a massive Netflix-like product line in development [0]. So someone from that culture will be very well suited to promote stability of that business model.
What remains to be seen is his degree of financial control, given that Vimeo's parent IAC could presumably spare relatively large amounts of funding for it due to its stake in Match and Tinder. I have high hopes for its stability though.
I haven't seen any hard numbers, but from my subjective experience and anecdotal data I'd say Soundcloud is closer to Youtube than Vimeo for a number of reasons.
Vimeo isn't focused on the social aspect. It's a platform for pros to share their content in hi quality which is the only reason these pros aren't using Youtube in the first place.
Soundcloud doesn't pretend to be a service for pros. Otherwise why stream at 128kpbs and offer such meager and ridiculously priced plans? Also no pro tools for distribution or even selling music like Bandcamp does.
Soundcloud is focused on the community and social experience much like Youtube or even IMGUR. This is why I believe it hasn't been able to monetize its efforts.
Either Soundcloud starts monetizing with ads or it becomes a real platform for pros.
Well, 128kbps sounds just fine on Beats headphones!
/s (I feel dirty just for typing the above.)
The streaming at 128kbps IMO has always been an anti-piracy measure; given that those previews are inevitably going to be scraped, make them just teasers rather than the real thing, and encourage purchase (or the cancer that is "Repost and Follow this random irrelevant promotion network to download" ... which is another problem SoundCloud needs to solve).
It begs the question, though - with such a large engineering staff, why has SoundCloud always linked externally for "Buy" links rather than running its own store? It could capture a lot more of the value chain and lower friction-to-purchase for indie musicians. Perhaps the reason was to not be competitive with its initiatives to get record labels (who likely prefer to drive sales through existing platforms for quixotic reasons) on board for SoundCloud Go. But perhaps with new leadership and recalibration, this could actually happen. RIP Bandcamp though... or maybe they just acquire them!
We will always be able to destroy whatever pathetic little protections are put into place. As someone who produces music and uploads it to soundcloud, and has done so for 10+ years, 128kbps is a good limit.
If they want higher quality they can ask me or hear it when I play out.
Also, IIRC, there is a 'allow high-quality streaming for logged in users' checkbox in the upload editor.
> If they want higher quality they can ask me or hear it when I play out.
This defeats all the practical advantage of the internet removing limitations.
I can't ask you because I don't have an account and will not register one to do so (I actually did once to get in touch with the artist and he gave me shit) and I can't hear it when you play out because I have no idea when and where you play out and we don't even live on the same continent.
Defeating the whole point of its existence points to a non existent future. I used to use soundcloud because I could discover music and artists and download hiqh quality files. I don't go there anymore and am back to discover music and artists on file sharing between people which I've been doing since before the democratization of the internet.
You assume everyone wants as many people to hear their music as possible, under all circumstances and environments. A lot of artists want some control over how their art is consumed (as an example, I would like for people to hear my music first over a high-quality sound system, not some shitty car stereo or beats crap), which a users-first 'UX' mentality attempts to commodify.
(And before someone points out what appears to be a contradiction with my previous statements, while I think SC is for its users, its original design was much more artist-centric and extended lots of control to the people who create its content)
It sucks that the artist you reached out to decided to be lame, but my experience doing that has been the opposite.
SC still offers a download option, and as long as your track isn't flagged for copyright you can set it and unset it freely, so the lack of ability to download from Soundcloud has more to do with the artists you are browsing and/or Soundcloud's UI.
By the way, I am fully in support of piracy, so no objections here. As a principle it stands for the ownership of bits and against the commodification of art. Piracy encourages individual pursuit, curation, effort, and even creativity. Youtube and its consumption culture value none of these things.
Soundcloud does a great job at frustrating me by suggesting lots of great tracks I'd love to play which I can't find available for sale anywhere. I am happy to pay for high-quality downloads via beatport / juno / bandcamp etc., but my experience with Soundcloud has been that it's rarely worth bothering to look. I don't really understand what's the point of good music discovery for previews only, if I can't get at the actual content.
Often this is because they are unofficial remixes or otherwise "grey area" content where the licensing isn't in place to be able to commercially release. If you make a track using element from a well known artist, often that track will be allowed to exist in the largely non-commercially exploited environment of soundcloud but as soon as you want to release it for money then you will be hit with a copyright takedown.
> But that would defeat the purpose of streaming services: convenience.
Many of us oppose this level of convenience as it cheapens our art. I'm happy to hand out mp3s or even allow them to be downloadable, if someone wants them.
And it looks like HQ streaming disappeared as a feature, just like communities. Unless it's still on pro, but I wouldn't know since at some point they converted my pro account to a free one.
Why would hand out audio files in a format that has been obsolete for a few decades ? Give me flac or any other lossless format that I can convert to flac.
And mp3 is not obsolete...far from it. 320kbps is still the goldilocks standard among Bittorrent scene, and unlike the current format du jour (what is it now anyway?) it still plays everywhere
Well I'm surprised too that people would believe that this marks the end of soundcloud, as the end of soundcloud happened when they preventively deleted many DJ sets in anticipation of a future licensing deal with labels circa 2014, when the labels gets in the picture to take their share of the money usually marks the end of the website. The deal failed, in turn failing the exit option to be bought out for a hefty sum.
Then the soundcloud purge happened in 2015, then as expected soundcloud was losing millions and faced financial issues.
Then the agony continued and still continues, as if it didn't know that soundcloud is already dead.
Maybe it will be bought by AOL or yahoo to prolong its agony further.
That is just a bias that I recommend you try to get over. It will help you better assess people and situations.
We can debate the long list of HBS graduates that have been amazing operators in tech companies. Every CS grad isn't a great CEO & every HBS grad isn't a terrible CEO. I wish the world was that simple.
I could counter that you need to get over your own bias, which is the implication that a CEO is going to be successful or is suitable for the role simply because he went to Harvard.
I didn't claim that. Please re-read my comments and point out where I claimed that. I said "every HBS grad isn't a terrible CEO". It does not imply "every Harvard grad is a great CEO".
On SC specifically, I do believe that a company that has had issues with financial management and business model will benefit from someone with business training and experience operating a media business with similar characteristics. Kerry seems like a solid hire for the role. He may still fail.
Everything is situational. Given the set of problems that SC has in terms of business model and financial discipline, the ideal job spec would ideally have academic and work experience in the relevant area.
HBS is probably as good choice as any if you are going to get a general business background. And CEO of Vimeo seems like a great work experience with substantial ability to pattern match.
That is very different than saying that “all Harvard grads make great CEOs” If the biggest challenges were legal, I would probably want a CEO with both theoretical and practical legal background. If the biggest challenges were related to security, I would look for someone with background in security, etc.
My bias is finding a CEO with relevant prior experience. Especially in a turnaround situation, I would not want a CEO who is learning on the job.
>My bias is finding a CEO with relevant prior experience.
Should've stuck to just 'CEO of Vimeo' then. In most tech companies an MBA exec is seen as a negative (at least by the engineers). What you did matters more than whether you have a degree or not.
First, you are arguing that I should hold an opinion, because most other people hold that opinion. I prefer to think independently.
Second, you are presenting this as an “Or” between education and experience. If I had to choose, I agree with you and I would also choose experience over education. However, it is a false trade-off since this CEO has both which I would choose over just having one.
Nonsense. And even if true, that's irrelevant to whether they're well suited for the job. Engineers aren't oracles, they have stupid ideas and weird biases too.
You'd be surprised at the number of graduates doing simply ordinary or mediocre things. Not that there is anything wrong with that - not my point. Just that the halo is often the best thing that someone is left with years after graduating.
Now if someone were to say that a Harvard Business School grad came back home to try and help their small family business I might think the statement is more appropriate. But at the level where you get a job like this not as much so.
[1] And I went to one of those 'good schools' (Not that one but in the same category let's say).
The idea that success or failure has much to do with the CEO is I think mistaken. For sure the CEO can do plenty to screw things up, but not so much to make things better. So for the most part the best you can aim for is to get someone who isn't going to screw up big time.
It may be a bias, but it is founded. This guy is here to do business not music or sharing, he lacks the actual experience and understanding that he'd have if he were an artist or music lover, which will eventually achieve to kill soundcloud as it was or could have been.
People don't list "music lover" in their resumes. Nor does the fact that he's a professional CEO means he's tone deaf (pun intended) to the company's vision, or that he will destroy it (due to malice or musical incompetence).
"The new management should provide some additional confidence. I’d interviewed both Ljung and Wahlforss in the past, and neither had answers to the big questions facing SoundCloud about its product direction, business model, and the spurious copyright takedowns that have eroded its trust with musicians."
On the other hand, existing employees equity value is likely wiped out in the down round. They are underwater on strike price of options, face additional dilution from prior investors' anti-dilution provisions and now liquidation multiples/preference from investors.