
SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/soundcloud-the-youtube-for-audio-cuts-173-jobs-closes-san-francisco-london-offices
======
doublerebel
It's been a downhill trend ever since trending likes were replaced by reposts.
Trending likes actually showed which tunes my friends found most interesting.
Reposts allowed a single user to spam a feed with their personal taste. Then
repost bots were allowed to require repost to unlock a free download and now
discovery on SoundCloud is almost dead. My friends who are successful
producers but refuse to play the bot and pay-for-repost game are completely
drowned in the noise.

My bet is that since trending likes are a Graph DB problem, SoundCloud just
chose not to solve it once it became too hard on their database. They famously
had issues with early Mongo adoption so this would fit right in. Their most
recent frontend HTML5 rewrite always winds up my CPU and hasn't changed in a
couple years.

SoundCloud to me has always been a great idea with some great design that got
ruined by some poor engineering choices from the top. And at the end by a
desperate grab for stats and cash. I think producers would have paid more,
better subsidizing free plans, if discovery hadn't gone downhill. I ran the
numbers once on how CDbaby and Bandcamp became successful (based on stats
trickled out over the years) while SoundCloud could never turn a profit.
There's still plenty of room for someone to do this right.

~~~
legohead
I used to go to SC every day. When reposts started becoming a thing I loved
it, since the people I followed would repost stuff I would have never found.
But I guess I quit in time, as I never saw bots or what you are describing.
That's too bad :(

~~~
acchow
What caused you to quit SC?

~~~
RickS
Cultural and product focuses that emphasized engagement quantity rather than
engagement quality.

Comments would be littered with things like "hey, great, check out my stuff!"

That type of shallow "like for like" culture is absolutely cancerous for what
was previously a very maker-heavy audience.

~~~
tragic
> Comments would be littered with things like "hey, great, check out my
> stuff!"

> That type of shallow "like for like" culture is absolutely cancerous for
> what was previously a very maker-heavy audience.

Man, I've been in there since day one practically and it was always like that,
as has been every service of that kind I've ever used (hands up anyone who
ever maintained an MP3.com playlist). Music runs on shameless self promotion.
Players gonna play. Etc.

~~~
spynxic
Ideally, promoters would always be trusted experts. Question is: How do those
experts, without engaging other promoters, discover potential tracks for
promotion?

~~~
wbl
The slush pile or spending an ungodly amount of time in low end venues.

------
thowaway999
I was a director of an engineering department for SoundCloud for a time and
left several years ago. Frankly none of this should be surprising: nobody
there could figure out a product definition nor a monetization plan. What is
more: the engineering organization at SoundCloud at large was completely
fractured and suffered from in-fighting. Nobody trusted anyone across
organizations. There was no shortage of bullying even. Taking that in mind,
SoundCloud's downfall was to be expected. Because of caustic environment even
before the financial crunch, they couldn't execute. Blame the incestuous
Brazilian boys club there for it (I'm male, by the way); they bullied just
about everyone.

As for Berlin, I am sorry to say: I had high-hopes for the tech culture there,
but to call it Mickey Mouse would be a charitable statement. It was laden with
confused hipsters who couldn't differentiate between language du jour and its
monads and delivering a product.

When I applied, the warning signs were strong. Nevertheless I ignored them —
to my own peril. Needless to say, I won't make those mistakes again!

Right before I resigned, it was revealed in a private leads meeting that 18
percent of the engineering force had resigned in that given quarter. Was I
surprised? Not in the slightest. That knowledge gave me resolve to get out,
which I hadn't yet announced.

~~~
throwaway52342
I was a long-time SC engineer and can confirm, the influx of Brazilians and
especially former ThoughtWorks folks was the inflection point in the
destruction of the engineering organization. Conniving and intensely
political, they absolutely ruined what was a compassionate, innovative, and
productive culture.

~~~
delegate
Could you go into a bit more detail ? What did the Brazilians do / change ? As
for ThoughtWorks, I've been at an interview with them and got a strong cultish
vibe from the whole thing. Especially when they made it clear that their
'social responsibility pillar' is cool and all, but "we're still a commercial
company that needs to make a profit so don't imagine you'll be doing charity
here"... I'm curious how the people from that environment affected SC's
culture.

I'm sure the company had a much nicer culture when they started, given that
their product attracted so much original content.. So what went wrong ?

~~~
brazilianboy
I happen to be one of the "incestuous" Brazilian boys. Also, I came from
ThoughtWorks. I doubt thowaway999 considers me one of the "bad ones", but I do
need to give my two cents here.

1\. I fully agree about the fractured organisation with lots of in-fighting.

2\. I relate with the statement about "confused hipsters who couldn't
differentiate between language du jour and its monads and delivering a
product". I think it was more a matter of very clever yet immature kids that
loved to play around with eccentric language features. That was not the root
of any problem, though. The problem was lack of leadership to curb the in-
fighting and give the engineers some direction so that they don't get lost on
their drive to experiment around with whatever they feel like it.

3\. It's ironical to blame the ex-TWers Brazilians _and_ the monad-loving
hipsters. From my perspective, these were distinct groups. The Brazilians were
not the stronger advocates of monads and other Scala typing tricks. Quite the
opposite. The few Brazilians that were more fond of Scala were not ex-TWers.
In short, simplifying the blame to one nationality is very short-sighted.

4\. I'm very curious about who we supposedly bully. Or who was bullied at all,
for that matter. Perhaps, I was too far from the director ranks to witness
that. I'd imagine a director could do something about lowly engineers bullying
people.

5\. About ThoughtWorks, there's another misconception here. There's a strong
cult-like culture there, yes. It happens that the former ThoughtWorkers that
joined SoundCloud were exactly the ones that we dissatisfied with the cult,
and joined SC in search for a better work culture. The ones that I knew
personally have some quite strong feelings _against_ the "social justice"
hypocrisy that is rampant at TW.

6\. How were we "incestuous"?

~~~
thowaway999
I apologize about calling out the entire Brazilian group by name. That was
unfair. Not all of you were bad. I think if you asked folks at large
anonymously they would say that their was a whiff of nepotistic networking
privilege in whom was hired, why certain immature acts were tolerated from
members of the group, and why certain favored outcomes occurred to the
Brazilian network disproportionally.

~~~
brazilianboy
no need to apologise. By no means I read your post as an attack to Brazilians
in general. It was at a particular group. That's fine. I just think it's an
incorrect assessment.

I concur with the nepotistic networking in part. Everyone tends to refer
people they know personally. Our network was strong enough to become some sort
of inner joke. I doubt that this was what brought SC down. Immature acts were
not restricted to us.

------
dustinmoris
They also laid off the entire New York team and at least some individuals in
Berlin:

[https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947](https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947)

[https://twitter.com/katalunia_/status/882992899893460993](https://twitter.com/katalunia_/status/882992899893460993)

> Well, SoundCloud just laid off all of its New York engineering

> Literally the entire payments and subscriptions team, ads-eng, monetization
> engineering, everybody

> Not really clear to me how the execs think this company will be able to make
> money from now on

~~~
smrtinsert
That says a lot. German labor laws protect their citizens strongly. I'm pretty
sure they would always choose to get rid of other country staff first.

~~~
aianus
More likely the German engineers cost half as much as the New York ones. No
health insurance and much lower CoL and market rates.

~~~
scott_karana
I think you're probably right about overall cost, but just a note: German
employers _do_ pay into the health insurance pools, too.

------
pyronite
19 days ago an employee of SoundCloud posted an Ask HN about deferred salary
reviews:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575627)

~~~
j_s
It's on the list!

 _Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health?_ |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14653564](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14653564)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14653741](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14653741)

 _Other indicators: delayed salary reviews_

------
samcat116
Things I hate about Soundcloud:

1\. They haven't updated their iOS app seemingly in years. It lacks basic
controls and makes it impossible to listen to more than a single song at a
time.

2\. The really shitty "artist engagement" sites that force you to follow 20
other social media accounts in order to get a download. I know this isn't
Soundcloud directly, but they're the ones letting artists link off to these
basically spam services through a button that promises a direct download. They
could have easily required you to follow the artist before downloading
directly to solve at least part of this problem.

3\. Music discovery is absolute trash. Discovery on a platform like SC is even
more important than a place like Spotify because there is so much underground
talent that should be listened to. This was the entire point of SC and they
largely failed at that.

4\. I have seen countless artists on twitter calling out SC for taking down
their own songs from their own accounts for copyright strikes. It also seems
like their ability to work with artists in general is just utter garbage.

~~~
kogepathic
_> Things I hate about Soundcloud_

I actually liked SoundCloud a lot, before they introduced SoundCloud Go. It
wasn't perfect, but since it was free I didn't have an issue to live with the
flaws.

But they really burned all the goodwill they had with me and others when they
introduced SoundCloud Go. Here's a list of the "features" of SoundCloud Go [0]
and why it's difficult to accept them as a user:

1\. _Access the world’s largest music streaming catalog, a constantly
expanding mix from established and emerging artists_

It's not clear to me that any of this monthly subscription is going to the
artists I like (e.g. like Patreon). So, I'm paying 10 Euros per month for you
to run some servers while having a much smaller library than other streaming
services?

I do not work in the legal or music industry, but it's my understanding that
since most content on SoundCloud is indie remixes, they shouldn't have to pay
royalties to the record labels because the content is not copyrighted by the
record labels (legally remixes would fall under fair use). So unless I'm very
wrong in this impression, SoundCloud bent over to the record labels because
they didn't want to be sued out of existence like Grooveshark?

2\. _Full access to all 150M+ tracks_

Versus 120M on a free account. I highly doubt this number, since after
introducing SoundCloud Go, a lot of tracks from artists I listened to became
"Previews" of 20-30 seconds long and you had to subscribe to SoundCloud Go to
listen to the full song. It was pitched as a subscription to access
additional/premium content, but this is not what it felt like as a user,
seeing songs go from free to pay walled.

3\. _Offline listening_

You updated the Android app to remove the caching option, where previously you
could select 100% and have the app entirely cache the song offline, assuming
you had listened to it at least once before. I used this feature to cache
gigabytes of music on my phone so that once it was listened to on WiFi, I
could go out and not consume my 3G data while listening to the playlist. That
was a huge "fuck you" to users.

4\. _No ads_

Install an ad blocker in your browser and never hear ads anyway.

5\. _Millions of premium SoundCloud Go+ tracks_

Here's how Engadget covered the announcement:

"the subscription plan costs $10 a month and includes a library of _additional
content_ as well as the usual remixes, emerging artists and podcasts." [1]

Given what I've said in #2, this was not the user experience.

\---

I'm sorry to the talented people who lost their jobs today, but I don't feel
any sadness for SoundCloud. This hurt is entirely self inflicted. For any PM's
reading, here's how to burn your reputation with users in 3 easy steps:

1\. Introduce an expensive subscription service at the same price as your
competitors, but don't offer as much content, and don't publicize that any of
the money is going toward your content creators

2\. Hobble your existing free product to force people to the paid service

3\. Don't push any meaningful new features or notable bugfixes to your website
or app in years (e.g. needing Flash to play a song, HTML5 which eats up 100%
CPU so you can display... something)

Now I use Mixcloud. Not better for individual songs, but great for music
discovery given all the podcasts/shows available. Their app is a bit meh, but
there aren't any ads, and their website doesn't require Flash and doesn't use
lots of CPU. Best of all: they've yet to screw over users by introducing a
paid option.

\---

[0] [https://soundcloud.com/go](https://soundcloud.com/go)

[1] [https://www.engadget.com/2016/03/29/soundcloud-go-hands-
on/](https://www.engadget.com/2016/03/29/soundcloud-go-hands-on/)

~~~
matclayton
Mixcloud Founder here, thanks for the support and if you ever have issues
reach out. We're working hard on the app, but we're a super small team, so
bear with us!

~~~
kogepathic
_> Mixcloud Founder here, thanks for the support and if you ever have issues
reach out._

Wow, awesome! Never thought anyone from either SoundCloud or MixCloud would
read this.

Short list of improvements I would love to see:

1\. If an artist uploads a tracklist for their mix, support seeking directly
to a track within the mix (similar to a cue file) via the app or website.

2\. Introduce a better way to seek in the app. When the mix is 1-2 hours long
and all I have is a seek bar the width of my phone screen and a fat thumb,
it's very difficult to seek to somewhere specific in the podcast. Something
like 10 sec forward and 30 sec back buttons would already be a huge win.

3\. Sometimes the mobile app plays the mix but all you get is silence. This
seems to happen most frequently in the middle of a mix when there are
connectivity issues. Closing the app and opening it again when you have better
connectivity still results in blank sections of the mix. Super weird and very
annoying!

But otherwise, yeah, please keep it up! Mixcloud has basically replaced the
other music discovery services for me because it's got the content I want and
it just works.

------
skylark
This is a perfect example of how strong software engineering from competitors
can result in you getting completely left in the dust. YouTube and Spotify
have great algorithms for suggesting new songs - I feel like when my current
song is done, I have a really high chance of hearing another song that I've
never heard, but will enjoy.

This is not the case on SoundCloud, where I'm almost always jolted back to
reality when the next song comes on.

~~~
notyourwork
> YouTube and Spotify have great algorithms for suggesting new songs

Spotify recommendations are far from great. They crowd source based on
popularity, Pandora's recommendation engine is far superior.

~~~
smrq
My anecdata indicates the opposite, as far as quality of recommendations is
concerned. Curious how matters of taste might mean that you can't accurately
make sweeping generalizations like this.

~~~
notyourwork
Music preference is not something you can generalize to a group of people. For
example, I may like one song from Taylor Swift but not anything else. You may
be right for popular songs but where Pandora's genome project shines is
recommending music you would never otherwise discover.

If your suggestions are based on crowd sourced data like play count, your
recommendations will be further encouraged by recommendations and thus become
obsolete over time.

------
jinder
Soundcloud started dying when they decided to be more like Spotify and less
like the independent music discovery service they started out as. Now they
have an app and experience that is not particularly good at either.

~~~
ryandrake
I've worked at a few places that died this way. CEO: "We're #1 in $NICHE. But
growth is the only way, so we need to compete in $BIG_MARKET." [months of de-
focus later] CEO: "We're only #10 in $BIG_MARKET and now we totally lost
$NICHE!!" Resume writing ensues...

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Expanding to $BIG_MARKET is not a bad thing, in fact this is the textbook
example of "crossing the chasm", where you start with a niche and expand--if
you try to go mainstream from the beginning you will always fail.

The problem when you're expanding is you need to have a clear idea of what you
are. Because knowing what you are means you can scale by taking advantage of
your strengths instead of dumbing it down. Amazon is a great example.

But if you just expand without knowing what you are, you'll end up like
Soundcloud.

Also another thing is this idea of "what you are" (aka vision) shouldn't come
from some media coverage or VCs or pundits. You should have already had the
vision before these people started talking about you. See Snapchat for
example, media pundits started calling them "a camera company", and Snapchat
itself started believing the hype, and even renamed themselves "Snap".
Snapchat is not a camera company. It's a social network that revolutionized
private sharing. But they don't seem to think so anymore because they have to
match the stratospheric expectation set by their IPO. Instead of expanding
their own playing field they jumped into other giants' playground (competing
with Apple in AR, competing with Instagram in public photo sharing, etc.),
this pattern never ends well historically.

Soundcloud fell into the same trap. Their investor called them "The Youtube of
Audio", instead of seeing it for what it is. If they had realized they were
popular because they were a great service for indie musicians and focused on
that aspect it is possible that by now they are more influential than any
existing music tech companies. Instead they tried to become "the youtube of
audio", which is the most uninteresting thing I've ever heard, it's the
definition of "dumbing down" in order to expand.

~~~
skore
> Their investor called them "The Youtube of Audio"

And now, of course, (and for quite a while) YouTube is the YouTube of audio.

It should have been apparent that it was foolish to try and beat google on
that turf. Google beat them easily with a simpler interface and raw
performance. The biggest difference, though: The audio quality on YouTube is
actually _better_. Nail after nail in the coffin.

~~~
rhizome
Ain't no way I'm listening to mixes on YT when they put brickwall-compressed
ads cutting in on un-normalized audio every 10 minutes. It's a non-starter;
when I see those little yellow dots I hit the back button.

~~~
seltzered_
Have you used YouTube Red / the YouTube music app?

~~~
rhizome
God no. The only way I'll consider paying YT a single red cent for anything
they make is if I can permanently turn off annotations on videos, and I
haven't been able to find anything that indicates a yes or no to that
question, so I have to assume their stance is "GFY."

~~~
dgdas9
You can though. I've had them turned off for too long a time to remember what
the setting was though.

------
JohnnyConatus
ITT no one admitting that the problem with the recorded music industry is now
the fans who expect bits that make sound to be free while other bits are paid.

Spotify, Pandora, and Soundcloud fixed just about everything that people said
was wrong with the industry from the consumer point of view. And don't give me
that line about the labels screwing artists because thanks to fans who won't
even pay for a premium subscription, Spotify literally can't afford to pay
artists more without going under entirely.

TL;DR - music doesn't want to be free. Selfish people want it to be free.

~~~
imhelpingu
It's not the artists who are struggling, it's the platform. By your logic, I'm
oppressing Youtube creators because I didn't buy Youtube Red.

In terms of artists posting on Soundcloud, the fact that there's any demand
for Soundcloud at all pretty much torpedoes this entire worldview you're
espousing.

It is extremely common for artists to simply give away mixtapes on Soundcloud.
When/if Soundcloud is gone, those same artists will continue to release on p2p
networks. It is bizarre and delusional to believe that some valley person has
to be making money off of it for me to listen to the music I like.

People sell things to make money. People _make_ things for all kinds of
reasons. Music is fundamentally an artistic venture, and everyone who tries to
turn it into this other thing can frankly get completely bent imho.

~~~
kasey_junk
It doesn't seem like a controversial position for those of us who enjoy music
to wish there were some professionals making it.

If we are going to have professionals they must make money some how & the
current status quo requires them to be constantly touring.

Talk to them and this is taking its toll both in longevity & album quality. I
listen to albums a lot more than live concerts so I find this concerning.

~~~
kazinator
> _I listen to albums a lot more than live concerts so I find this
> concerning._

Or .. _disconcerting_?

~~~
kasey_junk
How dare you.

------
phreeza
Their Github org seems to have gone from 45 to 37 members. Not sure what that
means, do they only have 37 devs?

[https://github.com/orgs/soundcloud/people](https://github.com/orgs/soundcloud/people)

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Lo9slf...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Lo9slfH-9XcJ:https://github.com/soundcloud+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de)

edit: now it's at 35... ouch

~~~
lukashed
I wonder why they decided to remove them from GitHub already [1] when they
were given a 90 days notice [2].

[1]
[https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882983954059595776](https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882983954059595776)
[2]
[https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882981765064871937](https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882981765064871937)

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Maybe to limit the damage notified (and thus possibly upset) employees can
cause.

~~~
lukashed
That must've been an interesting calculation. Now they're paying dozens of
employees that literally aren't able to work three months worth of salary.

~~~
baddox
Severance is pretty common, and some companies will just keep you technically
employed (and thus paid, and even given health insurance) with no expectation
of you doing work or coming into the office. Three months is definitely on the
generous side, but not that unusual from what I've seen and heard.

------
kevinmannix
SoundCloud is my go-to for music while programming. I've spent countless hours
curating my likes, playlists, follows, etc. I'd be quite upset if the service
shuts down, 1) for the artists that have gained large followings through the
service and 2) for all the personal time spent that will in the end mean
nothing.

I think I'm reiterating what has been said before, but the reposting is
horrendous. It's made the listening experience quite poor from just using the
activity stream. I've also been really unimpressed with the lack of track
uniqueness - if 2 artists repost the same song, it'll show up in my stream
twice. Even more frustrating was the lack of uniqueness between tracks &
playlists, where one could conceivably listen to the same song multiple times
in a row because artists would post the track and then a single-track playlist
with that track inside it.

The UI is also lacking for quickly adding to playlists, etc. The simplicity
was a feature, not a bug, and the power of SoundCloud has been their artist
community.

~~~
mrleinad
If your playlists are public, please share :)

~~~
2xlbuds
Here's a dump of a bunch of artists if you like melodic house for programming
:)

[https://soundcloud.com/miloh-fliger](https://soundcloud.com/miloh-fliger)

[https://soundcloud.com/wilddark](https://soundcloud.com/wilddark)

[https://soundcloud.com/bedouin-official](https://soundcloud.com/bedouin-
official)

[https://soundcloud.com/hishamzahran](https://soundcloud.com/hishamzahran)

[https://soundcloud.com/theokottis](https://soundcloud.com/theokottis)

[https://soundcloud.com/hraach](https://soundcloud.com/hraach)

[https://soundcloud.com/ldsroom](https://soundcloud.com/ldsroom)

[https://soundcloud.com/zeroparty](https://soundcloud.com/zeroparty)

[https://soundcloud.com/foxloveeeeee](https://soundcloud.com/foxloveeeeee)

------
pmoriarty
For me as a music producer and consumer, one of the most frustrating changes
recently made my Soundcloud has been their cancellation of groups, which used
to be a decent means of discovering new music related to kinds of music you
already like.

Once groups were cancelled, the listens on the songs I post to Soundcloud
plummeted to virtually nothing, and I really don't bother to upload my music
there anymore, nor to go to Soundcloud to discover new music.

~~~
gorkonsine
This shows why the modern trend of not buying music and just subscribing to
streaming services is so short-sighted. The companies are all basically fly-
by-night, and can change their product in a heartbeat, leaving you with
something substantially different from what you're used to.

~~~
josteink
I use streaming services all the time, but this is why I buy albums from
artists I like and keep a self-hosted plex library.

Should anything I like ever be taken down, I can still listen to it.

The good thing about music is that it is ultra portable so mixing music from
many sources, services and providers is hardly a problem.

And you can clearly see that in how the market for online music works. Unlike
video, which is so dysfunctional I'd be hard pressed to even say there _is_ a
market.

End result: despite streaming services I still spend $100s of dollars on music
every year. 0 on video.

~~~
gorkonsine
I think it's great you have a two-pronged approach (buying stuff you really
like, so you're not out of luck if the streaming provider folds like this),
but I have to question your assertion about online video: Netflix is clearly a
success story I think. Maybe the only real standout, but still it exists. Lots
of people are signed up for it. There's also Amazon video; I don't know how
successful it is, but people do rent videos on there.

~~~
josteink
But those are closed services, closed silos letting me _stream_ content
through closed source apps running on a extremely tiny subset of the digital
devices out there capable of playing digital video.

Hardly any service lets me _buy_ and curate my own videos, without DRM, from
several sources and build my own library which I can play on _all_ digital
devices out there.

It's just a few big giant services, each with their own DRM and limited
platform support.

It's nowhere near a real market where I can pick and choose and providers
compete on merit.

------
mintplant
> Some rough news today for SoundCloud, the audio streaming site whose content
> is largely based around uploads from its 175 million users in 190 countries.

Does SoundCloud see itself as an audio _streaming_ service now, as opposed to
an audio _hosting_ service? That seems like a focus shift away from where they
started, and puts them up against behemoths like Spotify. Maybe that's related
to why they're struggling.

Tangentially: does anyone have any idea of how Bandcamp is doing?

~~~
cookiecaper
File hosting is just not a profitable enterprise. This pattern should be
familiar by now: gain prominence by giving away tons of stuff to draw in
users, and then clamp down when the bill comes due, resulting in a hard pivot
that alienates the users.

The truth is that users are not loyal. If you are offering something for free,
they will be happy to take it, and they will have no qualms about moving on
when you stop giving them the free stuff that they came for. Selling eyeballs
is a very tough business. People who want a realistic chance to make money
should have plans besides "sell ads".

~~~
jonbarker
Isn't facebook basically file hosting with a bunch of links?

~~~
cookiecaper
Facebook is infrastructure. It provides the connections out to your personal
network. Facebook's staying power comes from its ability to say "This is the
best way to communicate with your personal network at any time". "File
hosting" is just one subelement of that, because one of the things that you
may want to share is a file.

Couldn't the whole internet be generalized as "file hosting with a bunch of
links"? A "file host" is a company whose primary purpose is for you to upload
a file and give the link to someone else; they're a middleman that exists only
because a more convenient/direct means of distribution to the intended network
isn't available. This does not make the company nearly loud enough to
establish its own identity/user base.

Facebook has always been its own repository of people intelligence. It was
never just an "upload your photos here". Such platforms, like Photobucket or
Imgur, sometimes prosper for a while, until the communication channels that
reach the intended audience directly offer something easier. (imgur is going
down now as reddit introduced its own image host last year)

------
drinchev
That is so sad for Berlin as well. SoundCloud is one of the companies that
made the startup scene an actual scene.

I know that SoundCloud's interview process is tough, so I guess it's a good
day for companies looking for talent around Berlin.

~~~
brazillianboy2
very true. However, most of the layoffs seem to be in the US, for now...

------
maga_man_69
I wrote an AWS Lambda thing that automatically pirates soundcloud tracks you
like:

[https://github.com/josephecombs/automated_soundcloud_downloa...](https://github.com/josephecombs/automated_soundcloud_downloading)

EDIT: I think it's broken right now for some reason but this should give you
an idea of what to do.

------
janober
Very sorry to hear! Apparently additionally also the engineers in New York:
[https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947](https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947)

------
alistproducer2
SC had a unique product and at one point I really enjoyed discovering music.
In fact, I had a music blog where I reviewed indie and folk music I found
there. I found some incredible talents. For example, this dude Packwood from
Australia. I ended up buying his albums on Bandcamp, but never would've found
him without SC. Looking back it's surprising that SC never tried to get into
selling music. I would've bought download for lots of the indie music I found;
if for no other reason than I wanted to be able to listen to it in the event
that SC folded.

I switched to Amazon music, which I pay ~ $6/mo. I couldn't be happier. I'm
actually happy to pay money to have access to almost anything I ever want to
listen to. they even have obscure Drum n bass albums (which surprised me). As
great as AM is, it doesn't fully replace SC for me. No podcasts or indie music
by random Australian dude without record deals.

------
awkward
One thing that they did right was their use of HTLM5 to keep what you're
listening to playing while you browse the site. Especially for long running
podcasts it's nice not to feel like you would drop the thing you were
listening to if you weren't careful.

------
gregjw
The question isn't 'Will SoundCloud close?' but instead 'When will SoundCloud
close?'.

Just a very steady decline over the past two years.

Their talented team will easily land of their feet anywhere else, it's a shame
that someone's so previously unique is fading away due to trying to compete
with Spotify.

Removing Likes & Groups have really pissed off their community.

~~~
brazillianboy2
I don't think it will cease to exist. It might be acquired at a ridiculously
low price even if it's just for the users and the content.

------
untog
Awful news. But I'm glad to see that it's part of an attempt to stay
independent - I hope Soundcloud sticks around, in control of its own destiny,
for a long time.

~~~
strictnein
Well, I mean, they're independent because no one was willing to buy them.
Spotify and Google passed.

[https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/google-mulling-
soundc...](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/google-mulling-soundcloud-
buyout-say-whispers-sony-universals-stakes-revealed/)

~~~
jaclaz
Yes, from the content of the article it seems more like an attempt to just
stay alive.

------
nodesocket
As somebody who listens to SoundCloud almost daily I really hope they can turn
things around. They should completely ditch the free plan, and just have a
$2.99 or $3.99 plan. I am actually signing up for SoundCloud Go+ (offline
listening) now.

------
jasonsync
I love SoundCloud, but the premium plan options are surprisingly confusing:

$4.99 - SoundCloud Go $9.99 - SoundCloud Go+

According to the SoundCloud Blog circa 2016 (and most external reviews),
"SoundCloud Go" is the plan with the expanded catalogue:
[https://blog.soundcloud.com/2016/03/29/introducing-
soundclou...](https://blog.soundcloud.com/2016/03/29/introducing-soundcloud-
go/)

However, according to the SoundCloud Blog circa 2017, "SoundCloud Go+" is now
the plan with the expanded catalogue:
[https://blog.soundcloud.com/2017/02/28/introducing-new-
sound...](https://blog.soundcloud.com/2017/02/28/introducing-new-soundcloud-
go/)

Is there some sort of "bait and switch" going on here?

I can only think that SoundCloud purposely shuffled the product names around
to make us think that the $4.99 plan includes the expanded catalogue,
comparable to Apple Music / Spotify. Or am I mistaken, and the $4.99 plan does
include a catalogue comparable to Apple Music / Spotify?

Furthermore, both plans advertise more tracks (120M+ tracks) compared to Apple
Music or Spotify (30M tracks), making it even more difficult to reconcile what
you're getting. And the $4.99 price point is further complicated by Apple
Music, which also offers a $4.99 price point (for students).

The product branding, pricing and positioning here is bonkers for anyone
comparison shopping, reading external reviews or simply trying to understand
what you get. It's easier to do nothing, and simply continue using the free
service (and switch to Spotify from time to time to fill in the blanks).

------
tyingq
Other sources say total employees are 420, so it's roughly a 40% cut. Ouch.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
420 still seems like a rather unreasonably large number (to me) for something
that is basically a file hosting service with a couple barely maintained
mobile apps and a web site.

Quite a few artists I follow are on Soundcloud primarily for new material. I
would happily pay for Soundcloud if they'd bother to update their app for
Android Auto and Android TV.

~~~
ohsnapman
What's up with reductionist posts like this every time a company announces
layoffs? Scaling out a global business takes a lot more work than it does to
run a no-SLA side project. And you hire people to build out businesses that
don't yet exist. When you've overreached, or targets are consistently not
being met, you re-org, or, if that isn't possible, you scale back.

~~~
dna_polymerase
> What's up with reductionist posts like this every time a company announces
> layoffs?

I hate people like this. "Oh I could build that in like a weekend with Go and
React no need for 100s of devs..." Those statements only come from people who
never built something even remotely in this size and have no idea how complex
this stuff becomes when done proper.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Glad you hate people like me, that's very inciteful :-)

------
expertentipp
The wonder child of Berlin's startup scene is deceasing. Says a lot about the
scene unfortunately.

~~~
vr46
Do elaborate, please - I have often considered moving but various things
people have said keep putting me off, such as a mildly racist culture.

~~~
justanton
If you're deliberately looking for it — you will definitely find/experience it
at some point.

In my personal experience, Berlin is very foreigner-friendly.

~~~
vr46
I'm told both things, actually, in equal measure. That there's ample casual
racism compared to London and yet it's incredibly foreigner friendly. I'm
married to a German so I have spent a lot of time in Germany, just not Berlin
yet. No idea why my question was downvoted, I was quite interested to hear
what the poster had to say about the scene.

~~~
brazillianboy2
Berlin can be quite different from the rest of Germany. I haven't seen any
sign of racism here at all, especially in the start-up scene.

------
pducks32
I liked the idea of SoundCloud but it was horribly designed. The app was just
so so clunky. I know some producers and they were early adopters on
SoundCloud. The community was begging for this and jumped on early. They had
the demand, they just failed to execute.

------
niftich
I don't know how SoundCloud is managed and what their balance sheet looks
like, but it's deeply unfortunate that a site that caters largely to up-and-
coming musicians has so much trouble getting out of the red.

Presumably they're hurt by the presence of platforms such as Youtube or the
2010s' rebooted Myspace, where musicians can reach a larger audience and where
both sides of the equation are subsidized by ads.

Meanwhile, more focused sites like Beatport appeared to have a successful
recipe by selling actual tracks for download despite essentially offering
unlimited streaming, yet even they ran into some trouble with their latest
pivot.

It's a tough space to make money in, despite seemingly meeting a popular need.

~~~
raesene6
As soundcloud are a UK registered company you can actually see all their
accounts/filings here
[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06343600/filing-h...](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06343600/filing-
history)

looking at their accounts to Dec 2015 (latest available), they don't make
great reading. The balance sheet value went from £8m to -£34m in one year...

~~~
komodo
I wonder what their terms were when they signed up with the labels to be yet
another Spotify clone. If it was any sort of upfront payment that would hit
them hard since I don't think they have many subscribers to their SoundCloud
plus (or whatever it's called)

------
adamstober
Tough news. And it's great to see posts from people who are in hiring in SF,
offering to take a look at affected employees.

We built [http://www.layoff-aid.com/](http://www.layoff-aid.com/) specifically
to help candidates and companies find each other, with the main goal of
helping candidates find new homes _quickly_.

More on HN last week:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14647365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14647365)

------
lyime
Sad to hear about the layoffs at SC. I am a huge SC fan and It would be a
tragedy if service wasn't around given the amazing community behind it.

For those that have been affected at SC:

I am one of the co-founders of Terminal 49 and we are making global trade
cheaper and more efficient for businesses. We are automating the first/last
mile container trucking. We are looking to bring on our first 2 engineers to
join our founding team (in SF/Oakland).

Would love to chat if you are interested, drop me a line at akshay [at]
terminal49.com

------
justanton
I wonder what made them to open offices in some of the most expensive cities
in the world in the first place?

Was it in order to find the right talent? There are great people in other,
less expensive cities.

~~~
jayess
No only most expensive, but most business unfriendly.

------
StreamBright
Lets start with how awkward their API registration is:

SoundCloud Application Registration

[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNxc82RJuzC0DnISat...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNxc82RJuzC0DnISat7n4H-G7IsPQIdaMpe202iiHZEoso9w/viewform)

Of course they turn you down for requesting access to implement a legitimate
feature (listing the top most listened tracks from an artist).

------
norea-armozel
I'm not surprised. It seems to me that they lost their way when they thought
their competition was Spotify when it really was Bandcamp. At least Bandcamp
is still growing especially when it comes to independent musicians and niche
genres like synthwave. I really wish them the best of luck to get back on
their feet because I think there's still plenty of room for competition in
music hosting and sales.

------
cyberferret
Sad to hear - I have been on SoundCloud since their very early days, and
concur that they seem to have lost their way somewhat.

When I first joined, it was a great place to share my music creations, and I
enjoyed discovering other new artists who created the same sort of music I did
too. There was _always_ a lot of interaction and positive comments and I
actually made some SC 'friend' in that time that I kept in contact with.

However, of late, I feel like I am throwing my music into a deep, dark hole in
the ground. There are still the odd comments and interactions, but nowhere on
the level that it was about 4 or 5 years ago.

You can actually see this from the stats on my channel [0], when you look at
stuff I uploaded 3 or 4 years ago as compared to what I have uploaded in the
past few months.

It will be sad to see SoundCloud go. For me, my channel still is a kind of
roadmap of how my amateur music career has progressed in the past 10 years or
so and I will never be able to recreate that on another platform...

[0] - [https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret](https://soundcloud.com/cyberferret)

------
brudgers
As a cost cutting strategy, offices in San Francisco and London are plausible
candidates. Particularly for a company based in the EU those cities are likely
to hinder flexibility regarding colocating teams and staff due to increasing
regulatory hurdles regarding work visas.

------
batmansmk
Are they preparing to sell the company? There was rumors that they wanted to
sell to Deezer recently.

------
timeforanewSC
I'm not sure if this is appropriate here (which is why I made a new account)
but some friends and I have started developing a site which we hope captures
the main benefits Soundcloud used to have for independent labels, DJs and
artists. We can see many ways we think it could be sustainable as a business
that benefits the creators and owners of the music as well as the listeners.
So if anyone out there is interested in fixing this space and has the time and
the inclination it would be great if you would make contact via DM. We've so
far been developing in our spare time. We are getting close to Beta. No
thought or plan as yet to raise investment.

~~~
saaaaaam
Delivering music online is hard. Not technically hard but legally hard. The
reason for that is that there are two copyrights in a recorded song: the
recording itself and then the song which is contained within that recording -
the actual written words and melody.

You may well know all of this already, but a lot of people don't - or haven't
fully appreciated the complexity, so I apologise if I'm telling you something
you already know!

Butnwhat this means is that even if you have the agreement of the person who
owns the recording to be allowed to use that recording in a stream, as soon as
you make that recording available to stream you need the agreement of whoever
wrote the music.

The complicated bit here is this - even if the artist owns the rights to the
recording AND they wrote the song they may not actually be able to assign you
the rights because quite often they have assigned the representation of their
rights in the songwriting copyright to an organisation like PRS/MCPS (in the
U.K. for example) - who are then required to pursue for a royalty payment
anyone using the songwriting element (which is contained within the
recording). The reason they assign these rights is that it makes certain
things around songwriting royalty collection easier. Songwriters are paid for
the use of their copyright - for example if their song is played by a DJ in a
club - but the payments are often small and they cannot possibly grant a
license to every single DJ who wants to play their song and they also can't
admin the collection of that payment.

This causes a headache for people who want to provide streams of songs -
because they need to negotiate a licence and associated payment with the
organisations to which songwriters have assigned this element of their
copyright.

And it means that - in essence - unless you've done that deal, at some point
when you get big enough, one of those organisations is going to come knocking
with a back dated request for payment.

~~~
timeforanewSC
yeah I'm aware of all the problems with publishing. Frankly I think it's all
outdated, it was great back when there was only radio, film and TV, but imo
the rules need updating to work with web. However, that's not our battle. We
don't want to become a streaming service, we are OK leaving that to
spotify/apple music etc. I guess we would like to be closer to bandcamp by
still selling downloads, however, there are a lot of other ways to add value
to a service like that (speaking as someone who has run an independent digital
record label). For example, an electronic label will either directly or via a
promotions company, send out a bunch of exclusive pre-release "promos" to well
known DJ's and taste makers. They use this to gather feedback on how well the
release will do. This was important when printing vinyl as it could tell you
if you have a potential hit, or a flop before choosing how many copies of the
vinyl to get printed, or gave you the chance to cancel it if the feedback was
all bad. That feedback loop is still in affect, however, it's lost it's value,
it gathers mostly useless feedback like "downloaded for R.Hawtin" and it goes
no further than the label, or the labels facebook page. What if I wanted to
follow my favourite DJ and actually be able to see what he is rating pre-
release, so I could pre-order and or pay the label directly, via our service,
a premium so that I could also get early "exclusive" access. The DJ audience
is a big one, and DJ's still have to download the file to actually DJ out at a
club or whatever. I don't think that will change for a long time if ever. Just
the security of being able to carry on performing if the internet goes down. I
also think a lot of DJ's would like to have their virtual record box, backed
up at least, online. Imagine taking a flight half way across the world to DJ
and having your laptop/USB keys stolen. you want to be able to buy a new USB
and reset it from any internet terminal ideally and carry on the show. So
yeah, without carrying on and writing a novel, I think there are lots of areas
to add value without becoming a Streaming service. I also think Soundcloud
went wrong when they decided to become a streaming service.

~~~
saaaaaam
I think Beatport does a lot of what you're talking about - it's the go-to
store for DJs and there are DJ charts that are pretty robust and well
respected.

[https://www.beatport.com/charts](https://www.beatport.com/charts)

Regarding the early "exclusive" access - I think services that provide value
for superfans or early champions are a big area of potential growth for the
music business. Pledge Music has a great business built around this idea.
Coupling that with the taste maker endorsement of DJ feedback etc is a great
idee. The challenge - like all music services - is how you find an audience
big enough to make it a viable business.

~~~
timeforanewSC
yeah beatport tried and failed to get into streaming a while back too.

Pledge music and indeed Patreon are both doing good things for unsigned
artists and I see potential for some crossover.

One of the major problems with beatport, is as they are the biggest and oldest
store for electronic music, they take 50p on the £ and will only deal with
"distributors" who generally take another 30% or so just for uploading your
music. which leaves the label with roughly 35p in the pound to split with the
artists. which is a terrible deal.

Also they don't offer any kind of promotion except for the charts. which are
rubbish too. if an artist has a release, they will make a chart and put a few
of their friends tracks in, it doesn't help with discoverability for most
independents. the only thing which really helps sales on beatport are a
banner. and that is curated by a person who works at beatport. which is
flawed.

So yeah, in my opinion nobody out there has nailed it yet and there is still
opportunities in this area. I'm confident that if you offer a service which is
beneficial to independent labels and DJ's then they will use there social
media influence to push fans to buy from you rather than beatport/itunes/etc.
It's not a unicorn, but I believe it could easily be self sustainable (I'm
hesitant to use the word profitable, as I'd rather it was profitable for the
labels & artists than the platform, as long as the platform didn't lose money
of course).

------
LyalinDotCom
I'm not surprised they are not doing well. I dont wish them bad things dont
get me wrong but if you are an active user of their service (like I am) and a
developer then you're bound to ask the question once in a while "so what is
their dev team doing exactly?" because it doesn't seem like much at all.

They really need to invest into building a more compelling product, there are
some amazing scenarios they can tackle here but they seem to have no interest
in it or maybe funding to pull it off.

------
davidhariri
I used to listen to mixes on SoundCloud but I started getting spammed and the
site kept crashing. I switched to Mixcloud and haven't looked back for a year
at least.

------
kayoone
SoundCloud is one of Berlin's prime examples when it comes to it's startup
credentials, so them stumbling is really hard to see for someone working in
the city.

~~~
nodesocket
Also signals the difficulty in building large companies in the European
market. I've been to Berlin a handful of times, and even tried to raise money
from Berlin investors... Needless to say it was a very frustrating process.
They are very conservative and risk adverse. Additionally the bureaucracy and
"red-tape" hampers business.

~~~
Udo_Schmitz
>Additionally the bureaucracy and "red-tape" hampers business.

Would love to hear details.

~~~
robk
One word : notaries. Ridiculous and anachronistic.

------
paulbjensen
For those in the London office, I'm sorry to hear about the office closure,
I've been in the sane position at 2 startups very early on in my career.

The company where I work (Starcount) is looking for people to work in data
engineering (Hadoop and Spark), frontend (React), backend (Node) and
Salesforce admin. If anyone is interested, my email is
paul.jensen@starcount.com, and I'm @paulbjensen on Twitter.

------
shams93
For artists compared to using say distrokid to reach spotify and apple music
with soundcloud they expect you to pay to give your work away for free.

------
grumblestumble
Interesting stuff out of this thread.. I really love Soundcloud, especially
for discovery, but I guess I'm an absolute edge case. I primarily listen to
electronic DJ sets (RA, Dekmantel, etc) and the community track ID comments on
these are great for discovering new music. I rarely even look at the feed.

------
dyim
Couldn't find out from the article or the linked blog post - what were the
responsibilities of the 173 laid-off employees? How many employees does
SoundCloud have, and what roles do they have? Clearly they're not all devs -
do they work in artist relations? customer support? content creation?
marketing? etc.

------
fergie
Odd that a service which relies the newest tech and coolest music is cutting
offices in SF and London.

------
tarikozket
They have enough traffic to generate around $750k per day only from Adsense.
I'm not a musician and have no intention to get their "Pro" for 7 dollars a
month. I wouldn't mind seeing an Adsense ad instead of seeing an ad about
their "Pro Plan".

------
myth_buster
On a tangent, I now hope that A16Z podcast will be available on google play et
al. That was the only reason for me to use Soundcloud and it frustrated me
when I used it because it severely lacked features something as trivial as
sorting by podcast date.

~~~
rrdharan
The a16z podcast is available via the iTunes podcasts feed:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z/id842818711?mt=2](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z/id842818711?mt=2)

Which means you can also add it in Overcast, or the Pocket Casts player and
play it via the web:

[https://play.pocketcasts.com/web/podcasts/index#/podcasts/sh...](https://play.pocketcasts.com/web/podcasts/index#/podcasts/show/20a7ca40-9128-0131-8b7f-723c91aeae46)

[https://overcast.fm/itunes842818711/a16z](https://overcast.fm/itunes842818711/a16z)

------
noobermin
I think the end of the article is key. SC still has a massive userbase, and
continues to be where I find my particular niche for music. The only issue is
it seems the people at the helm have no idea how to maintain the community
they have.

------
cranjice
Soundcloud has it's issues, and personally I find the mobile interface
annoying, but what are the alternatives for music creators (and discovery)?
Asking out of curiosity. Would love to find a good alternative.

------
pinaceae
Well, I guess wonder.fm is getting screwed too.

They've been futzing around a bit too, they started as WeAreHunted, then got
acquired by Twitter to become Twitter Music, then shut down, then restarted as
Wonder.fm.

Making money in music is HARD.

------
richardknop
Oh. I remember a post on HN from SC employee couple weeks ago asking if he/she
should stay given that salary reviews have been postponed. In retrospect it
seems he/she should have left.

~~~
twunde
Here it is:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575627)

I was actually thinking the same thing. My general advice after being at a
company that went through multiple rounds of layoffs within 4 years: Get your
resume together and start networking when you have any of the following
scenarios: new management, new consultants, in acquisition talks, in a cash
crunch.

------
glasz
i remember being damn impressed by their html5/js-based embedable player.
around 2011. even thought about applying.

now i'm out of the fancy shithole that startup land is. prefer working with a
few ex-collegues from my hammock.

if you're in need for freelance work and don't bother writing ruby and
sometimes php, get in touch. if you're into elixir get in touch right now. no
erlang project yet but that can be changed.

------
eknight15
Is there a Soundcloud alternative (that allows for user uploads)?

8tracks and SoundCloud have been my home for years, sad to see them both
struggling.

------
mockindignant
Time to close my account before all my information is sold to someone or other
when they have their fire sale.

~~~
glasz
your account won't vanish from their backups. at least not soon enough.

------
socrates1998
Do any of the most popular music streaming services make money?

------
buster
I'm from Berlin and happen to have found an awesome employer, who is
constantly looking for talent, so if someone from Soundcloud needs a hint for
a job in Germany, message me.

Not that it would be hard to get a job in our industry, but well.. :)

------
ckorhonen
Minibar is hiring. React, React Native, Ruby, Data. In NYC. Ping me -
chris@minibardelivery.com

------
cturitzin
I use SoundCloud daily for music I can't find anywhere else. I'm amazed they
haven't tried harder to make people like me pay for the service. I would pay
if I hit a paywall at some point of usage.

~~~
brink
There are ads like every 3 songs on mobile. That would make someone like me
either pay for their $4.99 service, (which I didn't even realize existed until
recently because they only seem to advertise their $9.99 service) or use
something else.

~~~
doublerebel
The ads are mostly regionally targeted/restricted so users might not see them
if they have the right IP. E.g. in Canada and France I can't recall hearing an
ad but they spammed me in the US until I finally paid.

------
aaronlevin
SoundCloud employee here.

If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions
of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both
attitude and technically.

~~~
jkarraker
Alto Pharmacy is hiring in SF! We are a tech-focused pharmacy, and we are
focused on building software that makes a meaningful impact on people's lives
by providing a better pharmacy experience. We've raise $23 million to work
toward our mission of building the best pharmacy for everybody, and we're
looking for other caring, scrappy, humble engineers to join us! We are looking
for full stack generalists, and our tech stack is Rails, React, and Go.

[https://alto.com/careers/software_engineer?gh_jid=737797](https://alto.com/careers/software_engineer?gh_jid=737797)

~~~
adamstober
Would love to have you join our network, so candidates can find great new
homes quickly and easily whenever they're ready [http://www.layoff-
aid.com/hiring](http://www.layoff-aid.com/hiring)

------
flgr
To the many able people who worked for SoundCloud in Berlin:

Twitch Berlin is hiring. We're looking for data scientists and distributed
systems engineers working on one of the largest live video CDNs in the world
at a huge scale that makes things interesting:

* Data Scientist, Fraud/Video: [https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/17b5882c-6be0-41cd-a6ac-45b948e...](https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/17b5882c-6be0-41cd-a6ac-45b948e5d300)

* Distributed Systems Engineer - Live Video CDN: [https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/8929e219-138d-473c-8acd-4fcc3e0...](https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/8929e219-138d-473c-8acd-4fcc3e01fc0a)

* Senior Software Engineer - Live Video CDN: [https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/2fae3239-fe4d-4582-bfdf-7d43727...](https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/2fae3239-fe4d-4582-bfdf-7d43727853d3)

Primary language is Golang so DSEs from SoundCloud are likely to be a great
fit!

The latter two positions say "San Francisco", but we have a growing
engineering office in Berlin with people working on the live video CDN and
fraud detection. These positions can be filled in Berlin and we'd be very
happy to do so (helps us grow the Berlin office).

Happy to answer any questions you might have. Hope this will help some of the
folks affected by the lay off.

~~~
Geralt_Encore
Any chances for Android positions in Berlin office or whole mobile development
team is SF based?

~~~
cagataygurturk
We are hiring Android devs at eBay Berlin!

------
foobaw
Just look at Spotify and see how beautiful it is and how much it has grown
over the years. SoundCloud barely improved but I'm forced to use SoundCloud
because of the user-base and it's the only way I can promote my music.

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alydenardo
Come work with us at Atrium in SF (Portero) and disrupt the legal industry.
Cofounders: Justin Kan, Bebe Chueh, Augie Rakow, Chris Smoak. Atrium is hiring
for Senior Full-Stack Engineers, Senior Backend Engineers, Frontend Engineers
+ more. See postings here! We want you!
[https://www.atriumlts.com/](https://www.atriumlts.com/)

