How To Survive if SoundCloud Goes Out of Business?

bjkicks

New member
With all the news about Soundcloud and their supposed lack of funding, I decided to make a video about what artists can do to safeguard the careers and progress they've made on the platform.

 
good info and good video. I left a comment on it.

Until I hear this directly from Soundcloud, I think it's all just rumors. Soundcloud has issued a statement saying they're cutting cost so they're closing two offices in order to save money.

The employees in the offices who lost their jobs are pissed, ya, and they're going around trying to throw dirt at their former employer. That's common but Soundcloud issued multiple statements saying there's nothing really to fear. They're funded.
 
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And from twitter, the ultimate in bypassing fake news, "SoundCloud (@SoundCloud) | Twitter"

"In 2016, we saw solid growth not only for the industry but for SoundCloud too. And we see this trend continuing throughout 2017. To date, we have successfully launched SoundCloud Go, our subscription service, and our ads business in eight markets, including the US, UK, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Germany. We are on a very positive path to achieving our aim of enabling all creators to be paid for their work, while also building a financially sustainable platform where our connected community of creators, listeners and curators can continue to thrive."

Again... "We are on a very positive path to achieving our aim of enabling all creators to be paid for their work"

and from the CEO,

"SoundCloud is here to stay.Hey everyone,
There’s an insane amount of noise about SoundCloud in the world right now. And it’s just that, noise. The music you love on SoundCloud isn’t going away, the music you shared or uploaded isn’t going away, because SoundCloud is not going away."

 
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Yeah, I don't think Soundcloud is going anywhere either. Even if Soundcloud didn't have cash reserves or a credit line, I believe it has valuable assets it could sell off. The principles in the video work out whether SoundCloud stays open or not. I just don't want to see another episode like we went through with MySpace back in the day.

Thanks for watching and commenting! It goes a long way. If there's anything else you'd like me to cover, please let me know.

And from twitter, the ultimate in bypassing fake news, "SoundCloud (@SoundCloud) | Twitter"

"In 2016, we saw solid growth not only for the industry but for SoundCloud too. And we see this trend continuing throughout 2017. To date, we have successfully launched SoundCloud Go, our subscription service, and our ads business in eight markets, including the US, UK, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Germany. We are on a very positive path to achieving our aim of enabling all creators to be paid for their work, while also building a financially sustainable platform where our connected community of creators, listeners and curators can continue to thrive."

Again... "We are on a very positive path to achieving our aim of enabling all creators to be paid for their work"

and from the CEO,

"SoundCloud is here to stay.Hey everyone,
There’s an insane amount of noise about SoundCloud in the world right now. And it’s just that, noise. The music you love on SoundCloud isn’t going away, the music you shared or uploaded isn’t going away, because SoundCloud is not going away."

 
word brother. Ya, they have a lot of active users and as long as the users stay active, that's a huge asset.
Myspace started to lose their active users and it became like a shell

but ya, word brother. Thank you. Keep up the information :)
And if worse comes to worse, they'll get bought out. Somebody will buy them. They have 40 million registered users and 175 million unique monthly listeners. Those stats hold a lot of value. Google would probably be down to have a music service with those stats. Maybe....maybe not? but somebody will. And news is Chance did something so maybe he donated some cash monies to help now. You know, soundcloud has few revenue steams and is mainly kept afloat from investments....but they're goal, as they stated, is to be independent (making money without asking for investors), so we're seeing the new soundcloud go, and go+, the new ads, etc. This is new revenue and hopefully it goes up.

subscribed to you, btw. It's good to have another creditable source of music industry/business info so thank you.
 
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Update on Soundcloud:
I asked their press department what's really going on and for reassurance that Soundcloud isn't going away. They wrote back,

"Hi Eric,

Yes, SoundCloud is here to stay. What we can share with you reflects what you have read in Alex's blog,
here.

All the best with continuing to grow your following!


Cheers,
Lauren



 
ha, techcrunch is the reason for the hysteria too, ...lol and they're a fews days late on the funding report. Had they never spurred up everybody into a panic state, we would have just gone about our days like nothing happened, ...because nothing happened.
 
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But don't streaming services make their money with the monthly subscriptions? With that alone, I would assume they're makin hella dough.
 
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^ ya, Soundcloud is just started that though with "Soundcloud Go"...and they're just starting with paid for advertising as well. They'll be pulling in a lot more money now with subscriptions and advertising. Plus they'll have a lot fewer expenses having fired half their staff. ...financially, they should be in good shape.
 
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Where there is smoke there is fire.
The problem isn't the user base, a user base just costs money. Soundcloud has a huge problem with their business model.. it'll cost an insane amount of server space and bandwidth to accommodate all the trash that gets uploaded daily... most of which will hardly get any play and just has to sit there until the user decides to delete it. Then on the tracks that do get a lot of traffic, how do they make money from that? Probably only from the fee that user pays for their premium account. And maybe the couple of people that pay for their streaming service which looks increasingly out of date with it's low quality streams. Plus there just aren't that many people that are willing to pay for the kind of content soundcloud offers, as it's presumably a music discovery service... something they've never really made a push for by offering things like promotion services, more ways to interact with your followers and build a community around the music and soundcloud itself. You can't sell your music on it, or accept donations a la patreon.

No... just like every other unicorn they started with a great free service... that had great potential. But instead of expanding it they gradually limited features, removed them or put them behind pay walls and plans.. Ohh, the premium plan that offers exactly the features I just lost for a fee.. but I get a star behind my name so it's total value for money. They removed Groups, and they were an uncurated mess for sure.. but they should've just gotten some interns to curate it a bit.

The news in that Techcrunch article is actually very bad!
SoundCloud laid off 40 percent of its staff last month[FONT=&quot], with 173 employees departing in an effort to cut costs. The company only had enough runway left to last into Q4, and today’s investor decision was viewed as a do-or-die moment for the company. [/FONT]

So.. we are not making any money but we have over 400 people employed?

[FONT=&quot]SoundCloud declined to share the valuation or quantity of the new funding round. [/FONT]

So.. we are not very proud of the result, are we?? Normally you boast about this.. if all is well.

[FONT=&quot]Yesterday, [/FONT]Axios[FONT=&quot] reported the company was raising $169.5 million at a $150 million pre-money valuation. [/FONT]That’s a steep decline[FONT=&quot] in value from the $700 million it was valued at in previous funding rounds[/FONT]

Ah, here the monkey comes out of the sleeve as they say in Holland. That is a very steep decline.

[FONT=&quot] The new Series F round supposedly gives Raine and Temasek liquidation preferences that override all previous investors, and the Series E investors are getting their preferences reduced by 40 percent. They’re surely happy about that, but it’s better than their investment vaporizing.[/FONT]

And here the monkey runs around the room shitting all over the furniture.

What this means is that those Raine and Temasek people said: "okay, here is one last bag of money.. in return we own your ass. If you don't show us black numbers by <insert date> we'll declare you bankrupt and get out money out first... all of it (the 170 million and then some). The older investors can now be happy if they get some scraps.

[FONT=&quot]While abdicating the CEO role probably wasn’t exactly what Ljung had hoped for, at least he gets to stay on with the company as chairman of the board. “This financing means SoundCloud remains strong, independent and here to stay,” he wrote.[/FONT]

It also means he's out on his ass but is allowed a gracious exit so as not to antagonize the older investors (who've seen their share reduced) or employees (who've seen their friends fired)

[FONT=&quot]SoundCloud says its total revenue is now at a $100 million annual run-rate. If it can keep costs low and grow that number, it may eventually get to break even and no longer need infusions of investor capital.[/FONT]

uhuh.. how the fuck are they gonna do that without making additional costs, with 60 people now doing the work of 100 and a new CEO and board members?

[FONT=&quot]Employees told TechCrunch that the company was “a shitshow” with inconsistent product direction and dwindling cash. Ljung was seen as reluctant to be honest with the team, and unfocused as he partied around the world like a rock star.[/FONT]

haha.

Bit of background on the new CEO:
Kerry Trainor Steps Down as Vimeo CEO | Variety

Before joining Vimeo in March 2012, Trainor was senior VP and GM of entertainment for AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group, overseeing properties including AOL Music, AOL TV and Moviefone. Before that he was co-founder and CEO of FlipGloss Media, a photo-distribution startup acquired by Forbes Media, and was head of global media products for Yahoo Music. Trainor ran business development and product management for music startup Launch.com, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2001.

That's an impressive list of companies that got either liquidated or 'acquired'....

If you have a lot of stuff parked on Soundcloud.. better start making backups.

In good news though... looks like some ex-employees are already back up and running!! Listen to DJ Sets, Mixes, Tracks and Sounds | hearthis.at
Same service, better features, more uploads, no bots, better streams, better premium features. I'm leaving my soundcloud open, but I'm moving here.
 
Most of the (new) money is coming from advertisers. They didn't have any ads before, but they're rolling out a very serious (new) ad campaign. They weren't running a serious advertising campaign before but they are now. This is all new money and it's a lot for them. Don't underestimate the financial power of ads. Spotify is able to run their entire ship on ads and subscriptions. Spotify made $213,723,000 in 2015 from ads alone. They made $1,903,656,000 from subscriptions that same year. That's over $2 billion in ads and subscriptions. ...both of which Soundcloud finally just started. They're not JV anymore. They're varsity now.

if they keep their expenses low and keep that level of annual growth up, they'll be fine. And beside every major label supports them because they offer a different culture. I don't think most new music would be here if SoundCloud wasn't here. They're the leading ship in technologically advanced music.

but anyway, back to the financials. Their new subscriptions probably pull in another couple million. The ads will most likely make more for now, but they have multiple paid for accounts available. People will start to grow tired of the all the ads (and trust me, they will) ...and they'll subscribe to get rid of them, but the ads will come first and drive a lot of subscriptions later. YouTube does this. Spotify does this. Every major player does this. ...Business isn't meant to be comfy and cozy, it's meant to pin your prey, and get their money.

As for their expenses, considering they seriously downsized, they don't have nearly ( i mean nearly) as much to lose. They closed offices in hella expensive liberal cities. San Fransicko is very very very very very expensive to live in, ...let alone operate a business in.

Oh and, ya... they just got $150,000,000+ in investment money. That's a good couple years right there, I would think? The majority control goes to a new CEO (the vimeo dude), who definitely knows what to do...(Vimeo is still running last time I checked.) ...And, what's the problem with being acquired? There's nothing wrong with being acquired. Youtube was acquired and they're doing great now. Actually, they're doing a lot better now. ...and hell, Google actually ofered to buy SoundCloud, but Alex turned it down. Man, if google shows interest in buying your company, you must really have some good stuff!

...They should be in good shape and healing fast. They were solely dependent on major investments before, ...but now if they keep this up, they'll be entirely independent without any investment fuel, like a proper major company. It takes a while for a company to really mature.

But anyway, whatever happens it's all good!! Soundcloud has opened up a lot for me. I'm a hella lot better at music now and a much better producer with about 500 new industry connections made through SoundCloud. So, it's been a game changer. ...plus I'll match my entire 7 year SoundCloud traffic on youtube in about 6 months, so I'm already starting a transfer (just in case).

..It would be nice for them to stay afloat, and they think they will. They have a lot of intangible assets that other companies really want.
I think they'll be fine.


(damn, that took about 5 minutes to write...but an hour to edit into something decent)
 
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^ I super edited my last post, so if anybody read it when i first posted, ...it's a lot different now. Just giving a heads up...
 
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