Soundcloud Cuts 40% of workforce

[starise]

Good it wasn't just me then.

[MonoStone]

On 7/11/2017 at 7:47 PM, starise said:

Cons- They take your money to let you upload your hard work for free. Somehow that doesn't seem like much of a deal to me. The only advantage is that it offers you some exposure.

 

I think there's huge value in that though. I think it's a great deal IF you care about that exposure. You don't get it on any other audio-only site.

 

If Soundcloud goes, since there's nothing close to replace it right now, a lot of people...me included...will suddenly find their 'audience' shrinks to almost nothing... and then we're back to slogging it out live again just to get that 'someone who's not family/friend thinks my music is ace! Woo hoo!' ego boost/satisfaction thing! Imagine that!! Outside of here and a handful of friends I'll be heard by - The cats (I mean actual cats, not 'hip' people) and by...ummm no that's about it... mostly the cats...and they find my performances terrifying.... 

[MikeRobinson]

To me, the same old "business-model FAIL" just keeps happening over and over again:

• It isn't enough to create a wildly-popular service.
• ... You have to make money at it!

[starise]

11 hours ago, MonoStone said:

I think there's huge value in that though. I think it's a great deal IF you care about that exposure. You don't get it on any other audio-only site.

 

If Soundcloud goes, since there's nothing close to replace it right now, a lot of people...me included...will suddenly find their 'audience' shrinks to almost nothing... and then we're back to slogging it out live again just to get that 'someone who's not family/friend thinks my music is ace! Woo hoo!' ego boost/satisfaction thing! Imagine that!! Outside of here and a handful of friends I'll be heard by - The cats (I mean actual cats, not 'hip' people) and by...ummm no that's about it... mostly the cats...and they find my performances terrifying.... 

 

I guess I care to the extent that it does what you say. Probably why I haven't pulled my stuff from there.My level of caring though isn't way up there. I DO appreciate those who support. To me it seems a good ideas/songs place.

 

I  question many of the listens since many of those who listen want a return listen. I have followed it with "ifollowspy" to see if it was true and in most cases. It's always the same.

If I don't have time to return a listen within say a week or less, they unfollow me. IOW they are building listens by listening and hoping you'll listen. There are some who simply listen and expect nothing in return. These are the ones I would want to support. It isn't that I don't want to hear all of it, I usually just don't have the time.

 

And then the the chicks with sexy selfies . What's that all about? They usually don't have any songs posted. . I think it might be a porn site leader. I haven't clicked their links so I don't know. Then there's so and so "promotion" sites. It's just a mess...really, but I do see the importance of at least getting some exposure.

 

The quality of the streams is close to what you'll hear on Amazon or spotify. I like it for that, so I can get an idea of what a chopped copy sounds like.

 

 Mastered for iTunes needs a different master submitted through an approved mastering house and costs extra so you can say your track was "mastered for iTunes". 

[MonoStone]

7 minutes ago, starise said:

I  question many of the listens since many of those who listen want a return listen. I have followed it with "ifollowspy" to see if it was true and in most cases. It's always the same.

If I don't have time to return a listen within say a week or less, they unfollow me. IOW they are building listens by listening and hoping you'll listen. There are some who simply listen and expect nothing in return. These are the ones I would want to support. It isn't that I don't want to hear all of it, I usually just don't have the time.

I've questioned this in the past. I think there are many sides to it but...

 

- Soundcloud is still the only audio host which provides such exposure, and the listens and likes etc are by real people, regardless of their agenda (as opposed to say, Reverbnation, who I suspect show totally fake numbers)

- We have to remember that it's not all about like for like... it's also partly about give n take and networking.... and that applies to many things in life. It's partly just about getting friendly..... that said, I've cut my listening and commenting down to almost nothing and I still get likes and comments...and I think my better songs get more likes and comments..... but.... if you post a crap song and then spend days kissing everyone elses arse, you will still get lots of likes and comments.... it's just the way of the world.... Comments mean more than likes.

 

So... there's good and bad about it, but there's still nowhere else offering that worldwide audience. And things have changed recently on SC, I find I now get quite a lot of likes/comments/follows by individuals who make playlists for their own pleasure.. they want nothing in return...and that is about as close as you can get to real 'fans' on an audio hosting site! I mean if you stick stuff on Bandcamp, or put a CD on CD baby, sit back and watch the tumbleweed.... 

 

 

[starise]

I think the same thing applies to follows with respect to networking. I actually notice more of that than the listens networking. 

 

I was at one time up to almost 2000 followers and it's dropped down to a little over 1800. Probably one of the most fickle things there are. I don't have the time to listen to everything and honestly I mostly only follow what I like. I guess it's going to cost me . 

 

I had no ideas why a hip hopper would follow me. In most cases I could make music about Pee Wee Herman and they would follow me for maybe a day or two, then unfollow me.

Hip hoppers, please move along and stop wasting our time. I'm not just picking on Hip Hoppers, although I notice it with them a lot.

[dislocatedlove]

Unfortunately this has been coming for a long time. I really don't want to imagine audio online without SoundCloud in the picture; they've always been a pivotal part of my sharing and embedding.

 

I've always felt that SC was majorly lacking though, in many areas; customizability, potential revenue, etc. In fact, i actually wrote a post on my website called '17 ways SoundCloud could be more awesome in 2017' - You can read it here.

[dislocatedlove]

News coming out today ....

Not looking good.

 

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/08/10/soundcloud-investors-24-hours/

[Dazzyt66]

56 minutes ago, dislocatedlove said:

News coming out today ....

Not looking good.

 

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/08/10/soundcloud-investors-24-hours/

Not good indeed 🙁 I imagine their servers are running at maximum at the moment...

[MonoStone]

Everybody wants everything for less... and ultimately for free. Most people use the free account on Soundcloud.

 

We can't help ourselves, how could it be bad to get stuff cheaper or for free?? Surely it can't hurt us!  

 

We all do it all the time. We shop at the Supermarket, it's so convenient and cheaper than a specialist food shop. Surely it must be all good then.

 

We choose the cheapest car insurance...the ones that cut costs by outsourcing to countries where cheap labor is the norm.

 

We hurt ourselves in the long term with it, but it's just human nature and something we can't escape since in turn WE make less money and so have less to spend and if we can actually get jobs they pay less than they did 20 years ago...

 

...

 

Soundcloud doesn't especially need more features for contributors, some might be nice but what it needs is to attract more listeners. And it's just common sense that you can't take on YouTube when it comes to streaming music by major or at least 'known' artists, because it has visual appeal and because it's just too big with too much clout. So clearly Soundcloud's model had to be providing for the amateurs, the unsigned, and it does a very good job for 'us' in providing a place to host music and a community and good internal promotion of tracks.

 

It fails just because 1. most members are free  2. it does nothing to attract (non-artist) listeners who are not already members

 

Facebook, YouTube, GOOGLE are all in everyone's face all the time, they don't just sit there, and all have revenue models figured out... we get stuff 'free', huge numbers join, marketing types fall over themselves to target those numbers and grab the data and they pay for that, adverts on every video and adverts everywhere we go, extremely valuable data we're not even aware of to track our wants and who we know and just about everything else about us...to market more stuff to us... so those services are not just sat around being nicey nicey free place like Soundcloud is.

 

.... Soundcloud just kind of sits around scratching its arse and being all muso... doing nothing except providing a really useful platform and community to members for free... how could it succeed? Who's even heard of it!!?? I have a 9yr old daughter, she has no idea what Soundcloud is because she's not looking for a place to host audio!! And sadly... and this is maybe the main reason Soundcloud can't make it work - Because she has no interest in only listening to music without seeing something entertaining....EVEN THOUGH... she will very happily listen to music in the car or at a party, she is programmed to know that music online MUST come with visuals because IT'S ON A SCREEN!

 

But huge numbers have value. And I guess that's why investors believed in SC. I'm baffled that they can't see the way to make it work. I mean shittin hell just putting a few ads on pages or even behind waveforms would be a start. Being bothered to seriously promote SC paying artists to music lovers and casual listeners therefore encouraging paid accounts would help!.... Maybe I'm wrong, I mean these must be smart people... Maybe I'm just pissed off because IF they did do what I'm suggesting it would benefit me, us, as well as them, and could begin to change the way discovering new music works for the average music lover.

 

So ... looks like time to get stuff on YouTube instead... Which gives me an idea...

 

... We need videos.... videos are a pain in the arse to make... adverts before videos are a pain in the arse ... why don't advertisers make music videos which work with our audio? I mean just auto-work with the audio, or be customisable, and being selectable by style/mood etc..... e.g. If I make a kind of spooky sounding song, I select the Coke 'spooky' theme, and it does spooky stuff that moves and changes with the beat. I make a happy song (as if) and select the Nike happy auto-vid. I mean let's be honest it's not going to be a case of growth in video production companies because no one wants to pay.... but we will all need video, and we all hate that 5 second ad time...

 

... I suppose it's because music uploaded by unknowns doesn't attract many views anyway, and Youtube is about entertaining people visually and attracting people that way...and I guess Nike wouldn't want their auto-vid on some nut job or crappy music or MY music. I guess that's why. So ... time to make videos....

[MonoStone]

Just now, tunesmithth said:

Breaking News...just ran across this on Google News -

https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/11/soundcloud-saved/

 

 

Good... saving jobs is good! But I doubt they'll do more for the likes of us. Not to copy HoboSage but... moving to YouTube is likely the best idea. I'm a fully paying member of Soundcloud and whilst it's a nice place to store music and find collaborators and get some ego boosting comments... YouTube is a more 'real' place for that, and at least offers genuine potential to rise from zero to hero....AND get comments from listeners as well as other artists... On Soundcloud, that just can't happen. And YouTube was free last time I looked since they can generate revenue without charging me....

 

Going through my public SC tracks... looks like I have about 50 videos to make just for starters. That'll get dull fast... that's the only problem. 

[starise]

FWIW CD Baby will launch your song to a static video image. They used my album cover. Better than nothing at all on YouTube I guess. If you go with them your music will be on YouTube.

 

I've been looking at a few of those free videos online to maybe put a few tunes onto. A simple video editing program, a decent track and a video should do it. You're still a needle in a haystack, even on YouTube I think. At least there you have a chance. I have a video camera and could probably take some shots of my fat self dancing or something. Second thought, better scratch that idea. I could get some nice nature shots though.

 

Better yet, find a youtuber with  high play counts and offer to make music for their next episode for free in exchange to let you post a link to your other music. Just a thought. You might reach more people with someone already established. 

 

I am seriously thinking about downloading all of my tracks from Soundcloud since I might have lost the daw versions of a few. If I'm not mistaken, you can get the better file resolutions on downloads. IOW if you uploaded in 24/96, it should have kept that file. Then, if the worst happens, I'll at least have a bunch of my older stuff.

 

Soundcloud looks to me like one of those tech companies that investors pour huge amounts of cash into and there's never anything to show for it.  How many more investors are going to dump cash into it? If it wasn't for a few other emergency saves in the past several years SC would be finished already.

 

And what do those who run it think? They have nothing to loose. HUGE salaries. They are already set for life no matter what happens. It could close today and they would still be filthy rich for the rest of their lives. Hopefully the newly elected CEO can turn it around. Hopefully he wants to turn it around. They really need a new strategy. The one they have is sinking them,

[starise]

I still think the most mutually beneficial strategy for both musicians and listeners would be to offer a page similar to the one they have now with the musician giving away a few tracks for free as sample tracks. The rest would be billed at .99  per track with .30 going to SC and .70 going to the musician. Those tracks could be played in a SC app and added to their personal song rotation. SC should allow music video or video uploads and have a video section. Maybe offer the video free with the paid audio.

 

I have a hard time believe that all millennials are only using YouTube for music. There's too many on the run using portable players.

 

Lastly, SC needs a much much more strict categorization of genre's. The genres are all skewed.The metadata they use has more than a few holes in it.

[Just1L]

5 minutes ago, tunesmithth said:

 

I'm curious...does anyone here personally know a non-musician/songwriter/lyricist who belongs-to, or regularly uses SoundCloud ?

I do not.

Matter of fact, I've never heard anyone outside of musical circles mention the name SoundCloud.

On the other hand, I don't know of a single person on the planet who hasn't heard of YouTube.  

...just sayin' guys, sometimes we allow our familiarity with these entities to bias our view of their place in the overall scheme of things.

 

Tom 

 

My son does use and have a SC account. But he mainly gets his music from CDs we have around the house or Spotify. As far as I know he doesn't use YouTube for music. Although there was about a month last year when he had to do a report on 1980 and did listen to music from that era on Youtube.  According to the history section on Youtube anyways.

[starise]

3 minutes ago, tunesmithth said:

 

I'm curious...does anyone here personally know a non-musician/songwriter/lyricist who belongs-to, or regularly uses SoundCloud ?

I do not.

Matter of fact, I've never heard anyone outside of musical circles mention the name SoundCloud.

On the other hand, I don't know of a single person on the planet who hasn't heard of YouTube.  

...just sayin' guys, sometimes we allow our familiarity with these entities to bias our view of their place in the overall scheme of things.

 

Tom 

 

 I know a few. I think I was mainly referring to people who buy music for their iPhones from Amazon and iTunes. In any large city I see hundreds of people running in all directions with headphones on. Only a few might be watching a video on the train going to work. Most are strictly aural. Maybe it's because I'm old school and I don't feel the need to see a video with my music too 

[starise]

I think maybe you look at Soundcloud the same way I look at  Soundclick. Whenever I go there I'm asking myself who would upload, much less play anything on Soundclick. It is a survivor though. And I see it mainly as a musician site.

 

I can only venture a guess with Soundcloud. Some tracks get hundreds of thousands of listens, so someone is listening to it. Familiarity might be regional. The site was started by Scandinavians, so it likely had a boost from that area since they like to support their own over there. This is why some genres popular there like EDM seemed to move along better.

Since then though, it really is overloaded with Hip Hop, Trip Hop and similar. I'm not sure exactly why. I don't mean to say that's all there is, but I see large percentages of it. Maybe this is the kind of listener it attracts.

 

I personally feel SC is probably one of the most popular free music sites. I don't see it as the place most people would visit to buy or look to buy. I think that could be changed by their strategy. Honestly when I put it on It's because I just want to see what's out there. Then I end up turning it off out of frustration most of the time. I'm an old fart though. YMMV.

[Richard Tracey]

I went to visit the producer I am going to work with today. We spoke about where to post music and I mentioned I use SoundCloud and that no-one really uses it to search for or listen to music anymore and it is more for linking others to your songs. He agreed and said that you re better off having your music on Amazon and link to that for all the good SoundCloud is doing.

 

Unless SoundCloud come up with a new radical business model on the back of all the issues and encourage people to subscribe with incentives, then we will probably be having the same discussion in 6 to 12 months.

[starise]

I agree Richard. There seems to be a lot of "fill" on SC for lack of a better term. I wouldn't say no one listens to it because some clearly use it, Probably not to the extent of the others. It can help to get you noticed. He is correct. It is a good place to link from. 

 

Who knows? You might end up with a bunch of followers like Beth here.  

 

I have no earthly idea why these posts happen. Can someone explain to me how this spam works? Would you follow her?

 

[Richard Tracey]

1 hour ago, starise said:

I agree Richard. There seems to be a lot of "fill" on SC for lack of a better term. I wouldn't say no one listens to it because some clearly use it, Probably not to the extent of the others. It can help to get you noticed. He is correct. It is a good place to link from. 

 

Who knows? You might end up with a bunch of followers like Beth here.  

 

I have no earthly idea why these posts happen. Can someone explain to me how this spam works? Would you follow her?

 

 

'Nope and the whole thing is a con - I think they want you to pay them money, for them to spam the hell out of everyone on SoundCloud. Would you be happy if you thought people were using your music to make money and piss people off!!!! I don't know how SoundCloud sit back and allow it and this might be one of the reasons why it has been going the way of the Dodo. Most people I have spoken to get annoyed when they see an alert, just to find out is something like this.

[starise]

Well, she or he or they have a twitter link. I didn't click it, but I suspect it might be porn or a gateway into porn. Just a hunch.This way people peddling for new users can post free in SC, get a few to click the links and grow their base...or so they think. I won't be opting into it. The pic might have been lifted from who knows where. The girl might not even be aware it's posted here.

 

Who knows what they're really trying to achieve. It sure isn't to listen to our music.

 

So much of the web is a waste.