SoundCloud Has Enough Money To Survive Only 80 Days, Report Claims (techcrunch.com) 57
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."
Bye, Felicia! (Score:1)
We have YouTube.
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Deutchelanders! (Score:1)
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?
Re: Deutchelanders! (Score:1)
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They're both Swedes though......
Fake accounts and SPAM (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Well, one of the local radio stations has a program I try to listen to every Saturday morning ("The Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show") and the DJ on just before plays eclectic electronic music. One of the ones I've caught several times just at the end of her program is a piece that sounds for all the world like a flight of B17s in a WWII movie.
Maybe someone really likes the PC fan noise sound track?
Re:Fake accounts and SPAM (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe...
But when a different person likes your track every 10 days like clockwork... too much of a coincidence.
Just look at the dates.
http://imgur.com/Q9cvnAC [imgur.com]
And look at the "people" who liked my track:
https://soundcloud.com/daphneg... [soundcloud.com]
https://soundcloud.com/nicolem... [soundcloud.com]
Same person in profile photos, just different image.
All those users have a very similar amount of "following" (a bit over 1000) and no other activity except for following and likes.
They're bots, all right.
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Is it Daphne, or Glenda?
https://soundcloud.com/glendalewis-98
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a piece that sounds for all the world like a flight of B17s in a WWII movie
"Nightingales and Bombers", Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Excellent song and excellent album.
Re: Fake accounts and SPAM (Score:2)
It's soundcloud's fault that there are spammers? (Score:2)
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If they send me a PM on SoundCloud, yeah, that's the spreading vector.
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I don't get junk mail. Not since mailman's scars became permanent.
An MBA can be expensive (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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No, the first question you must answer is:
How exactly am I going to generate enough revenue to keep this business going?
Re:An MBA can be expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly am I going to generate enough hype to keep the VC funding coming in?
- FTFY
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Oooooooooooooooooh! I know! I know! Pick me!!!!
The answer is apps ! Apps apps apps ! You luddites can suck an egg!
Re:An MBA can be expensive (Score:5, Funny)
You don't understand. This is on the Internet! Yeah, we lose money on each transaction, but you fail to realize we'll make it up with volume! Just like we did back in the 2000 dot-bomb era!
Oh wait...
Re:An MBA can be expensive (Score:4, Informative)
See you do not understand business at all. When it comes to creating the illusion of a business that you can sell, revenue is measured against invested capital and invested capital does not include loans because the loan balances out credit and debit (in fanciful accounting). The whole idea is to get investment bankers on side, who will help you to create the illusion of immense profitability in the future, for which they take a huge chunk of profit from selling your on paper super fantastic business. Now you can not sell it all because that looks really bad but you can sell more than enough to make yourself rich. The company then goes bellyup, you then claim your golden parachute, greed knows no bounds and you leave with the proceeds from the IPO and a lot of pension funds for some strange reason make a bad investment and screwed over their pensioners.
Now that how you make money under modern capitalism. Of course sometimes those illusory companies last long enough to turn their shares basically into junk bonds to buy companies that actually generate an income and buy enough and your company now actually makes money, not the original company of course, just the companies you bought. Under capitalism the one thing to make more money than anything else is bullshit, not always though, sometimes that shit just hits the fan and covers everyone in losses.
Mostly the investment market is lies, if you are an establishment insider you will make money, if you are not, than you will be ripped off in one way or another.
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Maybe you should consider doing an MBA. There's almost no business that starts with revenues greater than total expenses. Even traditional brick and mortar stuff like restaurants often run in the red for months or even years, and you need to survive and grow to reach profitability.
That is not to say that Soundcloud had a... sound idea for monetization, of course.
what is a soundcloud? (Score:1)
Should we be concerned about this? Is this a backend for something that people actually use?
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No, it's just some shitty audio hosting website.
Re:what is a soundcloud? (Score:4, Informative)
This is like listening to music on youtube, except the sound is of good quality, there is no video (so it's lighter on CPU and bandwith as well) and there is an automatic endless playlist (this used to be an uncommon or new feature).
Like youtube, the customers don't pay to listen to the content, and like youtube you don't need to have a user account either.
So you don't need an app or a phone or money to use it and it's not a music store or a "spotify".
Makes it all the more mysterious where do they get the money to pay for the bandwith and gigabytes.
But if this goes under, this will suck as this site is pretty well used and has a ton of stuff. E.g. if you know someone who plays in a local band, or does electronic music (creative or not), and so on, then they likely published stuff in there.
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Ob (Score:5, Funny)
So from a financial POV it's more of an unSoundCloud?
I'm actually disappointed (Score:2)
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. :(
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Me too. It's the only $10 a month service worth giving money too. Obviously not enough people are giving them the $10 for streaming and music to go (downloadable).
Soundcloud is the best for independent music (Score:1)
Poor sales process (Score:3)
The sale process was so bad I never figured out how to complete a purchase.
Won't last that long (Score:2)
Tons of artist's tracks are not there. Sure the listing is there, you can go to the song, but the second you hit play all you get is empty air.
I think they've had some bad hardware failures recently and are unable to restore many artists works.
Example: Only the songs that successfully play on my account are actually downloadable. The others are missing the link to download entirely (despite all of my works being made publicly available to download.)
1$ per month (Score:2)
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.
so who do you think will buy them? (Score:2)
SAVE SoundCloud :/ (Score:1)