SoundCloud's music service does not bring money and can close. This is important

Enthusiasts from the "Internet Archive" are trying to save the most significant records

In early July, the popular Soundcloud music service announced a reduction in almost half of the state and closing offices in San Francisco and London. The service has a 170 millionth audience, but it never became profitable; The creators of SoundCloud hope to reduce costs and still start earning. At the same time, according to unofficial data, the company has money to live another three months - but no more. Enthusiasts from the “Internet Archive” hope to save the most important records of the service, although storage of one petabyte of music costs a lot of money.

The SoundCloud archive is about one petabyte of music, including records that are no longer anywhere else. SoundCloud is very easy to use both musicians and listeners-it is convenient here to look for music in a certain genre and stumble upon something completely unusual. It was SoundCloud that laid out tracks from the new Albums of Kanye West and Chance the Rapper, it was here that the Sound Claud-Rap, one of the most interesting events in modern music, was born. In fact, SoundCloud is a YouTube for audio recordings, whether it be a new track of a underground musician or a popular podcast. The service is designed specifically for the original records that the authors themselves fill on it. For a long time, SoundCloud had no licenses to the music of the largest labels, and he removed the songs that the copyright holders complained about.

The service still does not earn anything. SoundCloud exists already 9 years ago, it was invented by the Swedes Alexander Jung and Eric Walfors. SoundCloud headquarters in Berlin, the company also has an office in New York, and until recently there were branches in London and San Francisco. In 2010, the service crossed the mark of a million users, two more years later there were ten times more; Now the monthly audience SoundCloud is more than 170 million people. All these years, SoundCloud lived at the expense of investments, but could not get into profit.

The company has paid services, but they are quite unobtrusive: for example, a free account allows you to download up to three hours of audio, and you need to pay only 9 euros per month for an account without restrictions. Many musicians have enough three hours, not all of them use paid accounts. The company also has its own SoundCloud Go striming service, but in Russia and most European countries it does not work.

General result: revenue of 19.4 million dollars with a clean loss of 44 million in 2014. In 2016, SoundCloud earned 28 million, but still did not receive profit (there are no exact information about losses).

SoundCloud tried to buy more than once. The first to purchase a popular service wanted Twitter, then the option with the Spotify striming service was discussed, but both times did not agree. According to rumors, SoundCloud planned to buy Apple to develop its streaming, but this information did not receive official confirmation. Now the service is proud of its independent status and, apparently, does not plan to look for a buyer.

SoundCloud has big problems. Very large. In early July, the service announced the dismissal of 40% of employees, that is, 173 people, and the closure of two offices at once in London and San Francisco. According to TechCrunch, the company has decadent moods, and the remaining employees even envy the dismissed. The publication claims that SoundCloud only has money left for 80 days of work even after all the dismissals, while the service hopes to maintain independence and find new investments. In SoundCloud, this information refutes this information, but the exact details of the financial situation are not disclosed. The main concern: if SoundCloud closes, then there will be no one to store a unique collection of music, and it will be lost.

SoundCloud rushed to save Internet activists. First of all, the work on the rescue of the vast music library of the service began the project Archive.org, which preserves Internet pages for history. On SoundCloud - a petabyte of music; For storing this volume, it will take at least one and a half million dollars. The employee of the Internet Archive Jason Scott told The Motherboard that first of all, the tracks filled in the first years of the service existed (it is more likely to be in any other place), as well as the most popular compositions. All this is done in order to ensure that the work of many musicians is not in vain, and so that the underground scene that arose in SoundCloud could be studied later.

Another SoundCloud intercessor is the rapper Chens (Chance the Rapper), the faithful User of the Service and his large fan. On Twitter, Chens promised that he was talking with the creators of SoundCloud and think about how to help. The conversation took place, and Chens wrote that in the near future SoundCloud would live - but he did not reveal any details. Many media suggested that he simply helped the service with money, but SoundCloud claim that they simply told him how things were going, and convinced that everything was not so bad.

Pavel Borisov