Spotify in Talks To Acquire SoundCloud

Janko Roettgers, writing for Variety: Spotify is in advanced talks to acquire rival music service SoundCloud, according to a report by the Financial Times. An announcement of the acquisition could be made soon, according to the Times. The acquisition would come just months after SoundCloud launched its own paid streaming service. A Spotify spokesperson declined to comment on the report when contacted by Variety; SoundCloud didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Spotify is the market leader in the growing paid streaming business, disclosing earlier this month that it now has more than 40 million paying subscribers. Its biggest competitor is Apple Music with 17 million paying subscribers.

This is not good.

[Anonymous Coward]

I follow the 80's synth music community closely and they heavily rely on soundcloud.

My understanding is that despite 100's of millions of monthly users they have not been able to monetize their service without pissing off their users and in fact run at a loss.

They essentially provide an invaluable service to the world for free. If this goes through I expect things to change.

This is not good.

Good

[Prien715]

Spotify works on Linux, doesn't have ads in the paid version (because the $10 a month for "any music I can think of" is a better value than the "some movies" I get from Netflix), and the worst thing they are guilty is paying record labels who go on to stiff the artists.
..and I love podcasts and right now, Soundcloud is one of the best ways to get them. Unfortunately, they're not terribly profitable. And that means, there's a chance of that work disappearing forever [slashdot.org].

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[NormalVisual]

because the $10 a month for "any music I can think of" is a better value than the "some movies" I get from Netflix

My experience has been that content disappearing on Spotify is just as bad as Netflix. I'm sure different genres suffer this more than others, though.

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[Prien715]

I'm curious. What does it not have? At one time, the biggest acts missing were Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, but this has since been rectified.

I guess Katy Perry?

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[NormalVisual]

Lots of movie soundtracks, lots of classical. It's generally pretty good for popular music, not so much for stuff off the beaten path. As far as progressive rock goes, they don't have any of the Neal Morse-era Spock's Beard albums.

Death knell

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it's Soundcloud. It was over when they were bought out the first time. It was really cool to begin with and then money interests got their hands on it. Once again creativity squashed by Copyright.

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[account_deleted]

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