meant to go in random thoughts, but yeah, this is a better place for it.
Wtf?!
ah fuck, just read some post on other forum how itâs a goldmine
at least Soundcloud didnât pull a Photobucket
1 BigUp
Deadmau5 actually has some good suggestions.
Whoâd have thunk.
1 BigUp
Unfortunately in the financial position theyâre in, youâre right. But as I said, this mass layoff of employees is only one of the steps theyâve made in trying to reduce their total business expenditure.
Might be be final nail in the coffin for brostep and its derivative forms.
Though then the Dubs board would become even more of a barren wasteland than it already isâŚ
1 BigUp
nah, there are whole underground cultures of music living on soundcloud tbh, making fun of brostep is just dumb at this point.
soundcloud tanking would be a huge fucking blow to underground music at this point, i know it sounds dumb as fuck, but there really is not another equal place for people to put tunes up and connect.
Its a lot bigger than the âEDM Iâm gonna be big somedayâ mindset that, tbh, permeates SC overall. Its a worldwide platform for unknown musicians to connect. Iâve found many people through it that I work with now on a regular basis; and I know there are many more out there to be found.
Most of the artists saying they dont care about soundcloud are
A. making money and exposure on other platforms
B. Making shitty stuff and are annoyed that theyâve not been 'discovered yetâ
C. Internet nerds that dont make music and like to make points on the internet
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Yeah, the came across as slightly more facetious than I intended. The ability to connect is a sound one in principle, and the loss of the social network aspect of Soundcloud is a blow.
On the flip side (and this is some square devilâs advocate thinking), maybe a reset on just how connected people can get with music is a good thing. A lot of the newer underground electronic sounds (post 2004/5, for example) suffered because of over saturation.
Scenes werenât give the chance to evolve organically as there was a slew of imitators (often sub standard) as soon as a new sound was put out there.
Quality suffered,months acceptable standard dropped and the scenes often diluted down to the point of being a laughing stock.
Brostep is an example; I firmly believe that if itâs had the chance to grow within a small local scene, that it wouldnât have become such a joke as it did when every 14yr old with a cracked DAW was churning out copycat shit.
(Trap went the same way as soon as it moved out of the regional scenes, though this is slightly more debateable if you hold up later trap SC tunes against early Memphis horro tunes)
Yes, it sucks to lose the connections. But it might help at a local level for more interesting music styles to come through without immediately being thrust onto a global platform.
2 Likes
I might be naive and not understand capitalism completely but why does soundcloud have to grow? why do they need several international offices and dozens of employees to run that shit? Iâd like to think they have enough pro account customers to pay for the servers and a skeleton crew of employees.
1 BigUp
I understand your worry but creative people will always be making cool shit regardless of saturation or some particular sound/scene blowing up. I can still get fresh, cool sounding honestly great tunes that are like trap or whatever on my feed because musically creative, artistic people make them.
1 BigUp
Because we live in a growth economy that presupposes infinite growth; in that schema, not growing is tantamount to death.
Perverse innit.
But from a day to day economic perspective they had to grow in order to make the money to pay back all the borrowed capital.
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I hate to think what their bandwidth requirements are. How many tracks on Soundcloud being streamed constantly? At least Spotify manage to segue adverts into their feed for a bit of revenue. SC never even got round to that.
Add to that the constant performance issues, lack of functionality (theyâve only just gotten around to making playlists, FFS), that risible shit they tried with HEREâS THE DROP!!! April Fools joke that blew up in their faces.
From a business point of view, itâs practically an MBA case study on how not to run an online service.
1 BigUp
https://www.axios.com/soundcloud-asks-investors-to-support-rescue-deal-2471398461.html
If the rescue package isnât approved, the company wonât have enough money to survive. It would introduce a dangerous tailspin as employees jumped ship and the money dwindled to zero.
So essentially, a ânoâ vote terminates the company. Or at least drastically reduces its chances of survival.
1 BigUp
sounds kind of like the 2008 bank bailout
1 BigUp
âHereâs another $170m so you can continue not making moneyâ
1 BigUp
I think they should reexamine their relationship with creators since they cheesed 'em off pursuing rank and file listeners.
Like, how cool would it be if it turned into a more sample-friendly thing where you could find free and paid samplepacks and ting?
But theyâll probably keep trying to charge for the base privilege of listening even more now, even though everyone has come to expect it to be free.
Iâm glad theyâve managed to keep going but for how long? It seems like they still donât have a great enough plan for actually bringing money in. They need a serious overhaul if they are to survive longer than the next year or so.