Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

SoundCloud could have been a nice business if they hadn't got greedy. From the beginning (or close to it) there have been various paid accounts for artists which a lot of people used. SoundCloud was the best place to discover new music from unsigned artists. There were unsigned artists with tracks on it that blew up and eventually got picked up by major labels.

But:

- SoundCloud neglected the platform.

- Then they did one of the worst redesigns of any site I've seen (try reordering a track in your spotlight [paid feature] in Chrome. Crashes the tab and has done for years. I need to open another browser to do that.).

- Then it became overrun with major label artists.

- Then they started offering features just to the big artists - various UI/branding options - (forgetting about the artists that got them to where they were).

- Then they did the whole paid streaming mess which they were never going to succeed in. Anybody could have told them that, I really don't believe anyone in that company thought 'Go' would work. I think they just needed to do something.

I'm not sure if they've taken so much money now that this isn't possible anymore but if I were CEO I would take it back to it's roots. Focus on the unsigned artists. Fix the site. Offer a distribution system (like CDBaby/TuneCore) so that SoundCloud can be a one-stop show for unsigned artists. Now you've got paid accounts (for stats/spotlight/unlimited upload space) and a small cut of distribution on all paid platforms.

I don't understand how in a world where more artists are getting big without label help nobody is offering a great platform for them. SoundCloud got very close in the past. BandCamp has gotten close too (although it lacks the social/sharing/viral aspect of SoundCloud). If SoundCloud does end up shutting down it's due to greed and poor management. Instead of focusing on what they do well and what people use them for they've tried to go after the money and they were much too late making that move to get any of it.

It is funny you mention Bandcamp as your flagship example considering how much 1993 duct tape is holding it together. You cannot compare the UI and tech of the two; Bandcamp has neglected the same Courier New interface since they were a startup. SoundCloud engineering is worlds ahead. They were one of the biggest proponents and pioneers of containerized microservice architecture. They took a lot of beatings so that we wouldn't have to, and that's worth something to me. Frankly I've never read an inspiring development article from Bandcamp a engineering team.

How about this for inspiring? https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/01/24/everything-is-terrific...

Bandcamp, with its "Courier New" interface, has delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in value to its users and artists. And it's still growing.

That's cute that soundcloud made a bunch of blog posts about their super elite containerized microserviced architecture. How's their business doing? Who's making money on there besides industry plants?

Something must be terribly wrong at SoundCloud engineering besides the money crunch. They have done nothing to improve the core user experience for years. They've only made it worse on iOS. Try scrolling down the feed a bit on Chrome - it heats your computer up and starts gobbling CPU. None of their paid plans get me higher quality audio, which is sorely needed because by default their audio quality is shit. As an app or paid service, it's trash.

Yet it's the sole music app I use: all of my favorite artists and music are on SoundCloud. The only thing it has going for it is the community.

"They ran their business into the ground, but they did it with such great tech!"

The age and the architecture of their backend have absolutely nothing to do with Soundclouds usability, which got worse and worse after every iteration, following the typical pattern.

I have no idea how Bandcamp is built behind the scenes, but from a user-facing perspective, their UI and UX seem way better than Soundcloud's.

>Frankly I've never read an inspiring development article from Bandcamp a engineering team.

I don't know the actual user numbers, but I'm guessing this is because Soundcloud has had to scale a lot more than Bandcamp has and not necessarily because Bandcamp's engineering team is worse.

But, hey, maybe Soundcloud did have a top-class engineering team. Doesn't really change my opinion of it, since I've always considered it the worst and least user-friendly out of all the streaming platforms (mid-song user comments I can't disable; next song autoplay that I can barely find the playlist for, with seemingly no relation to what I was just listening to; horrible sound quality; hideous and distracting color scheme that distracts from the music, much unlike BC).

That may be entirely the fault of the management and not the engineers, but still.

>> "It is funny you mention Bandcamp as your flagship example"

I didn't. I said they had gotten as far as SoundCloud which was close to the right product but not close enough.

>> SoundCloud engineering is worlds ahead. They were one of the biggest proponents and pioneers of containerized microservice architecture.

As a user, why should I care? After the redesign the product became abysmal to use. There are major bugs (like reordering spotlight in Chrome) which have been around for years with no fix. That's a paid feature, broken in a major browser for years. There are also still (or at least there were recently) some pages using the old interface. They wasted time building Go instead of fixing the almost great product they already had.

Bandcamp's aesthetic has always been pretty minimal. I remember an obscure interview podcast I wish I could find now where one of the founders talked about their philosophy of not trying to splash a "brand" all over everything, so the artists felt more like they owned the look of their pages.

The UI and the tech are not the focus. The focus is on providing a platform for artists to sell music. In that regard, it's been a great success. As an artist, I'd much rather distribute music on a platform that's proven to be run by those that put the needs of artists first rather than one that blows their load over how advanced their tech stack is.

The tech doesn't matter.

If I want to find pop punk from some unknown, Bandcamp makes it stupid easy to find them and download/buy their stuff and/or go see them live.

> It is funny you mention Bandcamp as your flagship example considering how much 1993 duct tape is holding it together. You cannot compare the UI and tech of the two; Bandcamp has neglected the same Courier New interface since they were a startup.

I really don't agree with that. While there's room for performance improvements at Bandcamp (the site can be slow on fridays, which is release day for most albums), their user experience and design is just fine and very functional.

Discovering an album via recommendations in your activity feed and actually purchasing and downloading said album is a matter of seconds.

It takes me longer to remove 5 items from a Soundcloud playlist, which is a process that involves opening and closing a modal window 5 separate times.

If one of those platforms feels neglected and dated it's Soundcloud.

> Then it became overrun with major label artists.

So what. There also many excellent major label artist and it's good to have them. Many new album releases are missing on SoundCloud but available on Spotify from day one.

Probably I am the only one but I find most 'DJ mixes' on SoundCloud lack in quality/creativity (I am into electronic music though). Maybe some like them I think 95% of them are subpar and sound like my nephew created a song with Magix Music Maker. These mixes and 'the extended repetoire' are no competitive advantage over Spotify and Co.

>> So what. There also many excellent major label artist and it's good to have them.

You're missing the point. I've no problem with major label artists but when you start dealing with them you start dealing with licensing. Then you waste time, don't develop the platform, and abandon the indie artists that got you to where you are. You need to take the point in context of the rest of my argument. When Spotify/Apple Music/Pandora exist why would you enter that market when it's not the market that you started in and you have no chance of beating them? Focus on indie music and you have a business where people actually pay money for the service and you become profitable.

>> Maybe some like them I think 95% of them are subpar and sound like my nephew created a song with Magix Music Maker.

Well that's how music discovery works. You have to go through rubbish to find the gems. If you want pro level stuff every time you should use Spotify/Beatport etc. I've been on SoundCloud since the beginning (since before it even became the go-to place for electronic music) and it was a great way to discover really good songwriters. You have to do some work to find them but that's part of the fun. SoundCloud tried to evolve into something completely different than it began as. Your expectations are a perfect example of how that skewed the public perception of it to the point where you and I believe it is completely different things - in reality it tries to be both but doesn't excel at either.

> You're missing the point. I've no problem with major label artists but when you start dealing with them you start dealing with licensing.

You think all those mixes come for free? They have to be licensed as well once the embedded song snippets exceed 30sec which most of them do (also depending on the local jurisdiction).

Soundcloud had to find agreements with the labels sooner or later anyway because of the mixes and just included the major label artists in the deal because why not. Otherwise they would have been sued (and they were sued by some)—again—because of the mixes.

> Well that's how music discovery works.

Ok, then let's agree on it's a matter of taste. But I'd like to revise my comment: 99% of the mixes on SoundCloud are cr*p. Maybe it's just my taste but I am also SoundCloud user from day one and somebody who spent tons of money on Beatport. If they can succeed with this music selection and find listeners like you and who pay, great for them, but obviously they can't. Btw, you find the 1% good mixes also on Spotify or Apple Music.

> If they can succeed with this music selection and find listeners like you and who pay, great for them, but obviously they can't.

For the longest time they didn't offer a way to pay, and the now-existing payment model doesn't really do anything for someone listening to the small guys, so the only obvious about them not being able to find paying listeners is that without an offer to pay for there is no paying.

> 99% of the mixes on SoundCloud are crap.

Spoken like a person who didn't understand all that was on the platform. You do realize that SoundCloud had basically spawned a different genre of hip hop and rap, right? It's not just dance mixes, there's a lot of stuff that's super unique on there and it's not just hip hop, rap, or edm.

You should have put the quote into its context, I wrote if it's a matter of taste then I implied that (in my opinion) 99% is crap. You might have a different opinion because you have a different taste.

I'm far from a SoundCloud user or a hip hop or rap aficionado, but I'd like to learn more about this. Can you elaborate? Or do you know of a source where I can read about this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/arts/music/soundcloud-rap...

>> You think all those mixes come for free? They have to be licensed as well once the embedded song snippets exceed 30sec which most of them do (also depending on the local jurisdiction).

Again you're not understanding what I'm saying. You seem to think of music (or SoundCloud) as only EDM. When SoundCloud started it was largely amateur and indie 'analog' musicians and songwriters (i.e. people playing instruments and writing their own music). None of that needs licensed. Those people, despite not making any money, were paying SoundCloud £9.99 per month to increase their storage space and see listener stats. Obviously I don't know how many but there were badges on the profiles to indicate a paying user and there were a significantly high percentage. There was quite a large community of this type of music around a lot of genres. None of it needed licensed. If you stick to indie artists you don't need to deal with licensing. People doing mixes can use MixCloud which automatically licenses uploads some how.

So, my point is, SoundCloud did not start off with DJ mixes or copyrighted material. It started off very legitimately and had a decent business model. They could have made a nice business out of it but like most SV businesses preferred to sink a load of VC money and 'grow' with no ultimate business model.

Edit:

>> If they can succeed with this music selection and find listeners like you and who pay, great for them, but obviously they can't.

My comment was nothing to do with listeners paying - it was about artists paying. Artists have always been able and willing to pay for spotlight/storage/stats.

> Again you're not understanding what I'm saying.

How many times do you want to repeat this?

> SoundCloud did not start off with DJ mixes or copyrighted material.

The CEO and CTO were themselves very much into EDM. SC positioned itself repetoire-wise as a DJ platform from very early on, most tracks, traffic, the first surge were EDM-based the first years. And 99% was copyrighted material stitched together. I don't know where you have your information from but it's just blatantly wrong.

Anyways, I think that our current discussion does not contribute to the initial points in any way and doesn't make us both feeling better, so I stop here. Have a nice day!

It was a platform for producers, not DJs.

But the underlying issue is that those DJ tracks many times technically did need permission from copyright holders to be posted. Unfortunately dealing with this w/o a ton of money is just a failing exercise.

Soundcloud is still good to get DJ mixes from DJ's I like, but I can seeing it go away just due to all of the costs that would accompany trying to ensure they have the right to share everything that is posted by users.

>> But the underlying issue is that those DJ tracks many times technically did need permission from copyright holders to be posted.

What the parent and I are saying though is that DJ mixes were a small part of the content in the early days. It wasn't created to host DJ mixes or marketed as that initially. Producers/songwriters/amateurs were the bulk of the content. SoundCloud could have built a decent business by banning copyrighted material and only dealing with original works. There was never any need to get into the messy licensing business.

> DJ mixes' on SoundCloud lack in quality/creativity

By definition they are about selection. Creative live mixes are performed in live events.

I use Soundcloud to discover new music in mixes. There’s something exciting trying to ID track using Shazam (cancer) or writing the time down and coming back every few months to find if someone else ID’d it.

I’d really like if they defaulted mixes to 320kbps tho. And streams stop randomly on Safari, while Chrome crashes after few hours of playback. Filtering options could be improved too, and Discover option is almost always suggesting me individual tracks - something I never listen to. Oh and there’s buffering problem between tracks that prevents to be used as continous stream.

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