[HN Gopher] SoundCloud is firing 20 percent of its global workforce
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       SoundCloud is firing 20 percent of its global workforce
        
       Author : AndroidKitKat
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2022-08-04 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
        
       | pipeline_peak wrote:
       | Not surprised given the climate and considering how mediocre of a
       | platform SoundCloud is. I showed my friends back in 2011, we all
       | thought it was a really cool way to share music. We played in a
       | band together so it was a nice way to share rough tracks, still
       | is.
       | 
       | But Streaming is now dominant for music playback. It's easier
       | than ever for artists to publish themselves on Spotify and let's
       | not forget the 10 other SoundCloud-like platforms.
       | 
       | What does the SoundCloud dev team even do, db administration,
       | Recommendation ML, making sure iOS SoundCloud syncs with the
       | webApp? These services are all getting outsourced.
       | 
       | SoundCloud belongs to the 2000s era of start up trends. "Let's
       | share things with other people online and connect with each
       | other" Whatever the latter meant.
       | 
       | I read someone talk about how Facebook belongs to the old school
       | of relational graph based social networking whereas TikTok has
       | this ML user driven approach. SoundCloud feels like a graph,
       | people don't traverse anymore.
        
         | plasma_beam wrote:
         | Not arguing the lack of progress on the platform, but I think
         | usage varies depending on type of music. I use SoundCloud daily
         | still, their stream function where I'm checking latest posts
         | from artists and labels I follow. I listen to a lot of
         | electronic music, and I listen to dj sets on sound cloud that
         | aren't posted elsewhere. I rely on it for new dj sets, and
         | they're still the best for that IMO.
        
           | pipeline_peak wrote:
           | I guess it doesn't help my perspective that I'm heavily into
           | 90s indie rock.
           | 
           | Cloud rap wasn't coined because the platform was a failure
           | that's for sure. I think the future of SoundCloud looks more
           | focused on hip hop, EDM, and types of music that are often
           | produced more consistently than one album at a time. But
           | albums are an archaic concept, maybe all music will move
           | towards more frequent syndication.
           | 
           | I just hope they don't end up like MySpace, whatever it is
           | that they do.
        
       | Rodeoclash wrote:
       | I hope SoundCloud manages to hang on somehow. I've found it much
       | better for music discovery then I have Spotify, mainly because
       | I've really diligent in curating my list of who I follow and as a
       | result, each day when I open my stream, I'll get a a few hours of
       | new and unusual electronica sets to listen to.
       | 
       | Without SoundCloud I never would have found genres like 170
       | Drum'n'Bass or Dark Disco. With Spotify, I'll just get... the Red
       | Hot Chilli Peppers or Foo Fighters. Both bands that are somehow
       | in the centre of the Venn diagram of musical taste.
       | 
       | The only thing that's come close to this is YouTube's
       | recommendations. Somehow the YouTube algorithm has decided that I
       | need to be shown weird and wonderful full length albums of
       | Japanese funk and jazz from the 80s. When I read the comments on
       | the videos, they're inevitably from other people that are equally
       | bewildered about why they got recommended the album too.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-08-04 23:02 UTC)