The problem is this bullshit game of business as you described. Soundcloud shouldn't need that kind of headcount or costs. We need new models of business that lock out the existing shareholder and management classes and their toxic thinking in favor of a structure that is far more equitable and hierarchically flat. Soundcloud is and was only ever for the users. A small power group (headcount-wise) trying to monetize SC will always be doomed to fail.

So many beautiful ideas are destroyed by the greed and avarice that underpins 'fiduciary duty to shareholders' and their expectations of unnatural and unhealthy growth.