
Beatport “Bloodbath” As Dance Music Startup Lays Off Engineers - vyrotek
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/08/beatport-layoffs/
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error54
I feel bad for the people but this is just another company trimming the fat to
increase their stock price (which worked [1]). I don't see why TechCrunch
calls Beatport a startup as it is 10 years old and owned by another company.

1 - [http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/sfxe](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/sfxe)

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hkmurakami
Well, slideshare is 7 years old and is owned by LinkedIn, but I suspect that
many of us here would consider it to be a startup.

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benoits
Interesting. What's you definition of a startup then?

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downer90
Ballpark: Small business, less than 20 employees, and less than 5 years old,
and started with unconventional debt (not bank loans). Bonus points to
"startup" credentials when software development or new, emerging technologies
are involved.

20 50K salaries multiplied by 5 years is five million dollars in labor, never
mind the overhead. If you've burned through that much cash and you're still in
business after five years, congratulations. Unicorns aside, it doesn't matter
if you're in the red or in the black. You are an established business, and not
some fledgling twinkle in an investor's eyes.

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textminer
Surprised I've heard nothing about the bloodbath at Dr. Dre's Beats Music/MOG
online service. They hired up a huge data scientist contingent, then fired
them all. Strange considering how aggressive their recruiting was. Also
strange to ponder hiring data scientists for a yet-to-be-launched service
(with little data).

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eshvk
Really? any references to this?

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danso
Just did a quick google search, mostly because I would think being a data
engineer for Dr. Dre, even if you got laid off soon after, would be hilarious
to have on the resume. The first reference I found was this August 2013 story:

> _Beats Music is also hiring to fill 13 positions, indicating that much work
> remains to be done if this music service is going to launch by the end of
> the year, as expected. The company is looking for everything from iOS and
> Android developers to visual designers and an ingesting specialist (the
> person at any music service who’s responsible from grabbing music from
> artists and labels and putting it into the system). In addition, it wants to
> hire a “data engineer,” a “data scientist” to focus on machine learning, and
> a “senior software engineer – recommendations,” indicating that some degree
> of machine recommendations will be built into the system._

Here's their current job listings:

Billing Software Engineer San Francisco Data Engineer San Francisco Data
Engineer, Ingestion - Warehousing San Francisco Full Stack Web Developer San
Francisco iOS Developer San Francisco Project Manager San Francisco Senior
Android Developer San Francisco Senior Data Pipeline Engineer San Francisco
Senior Software Engineer San Francisco Senior Systems Engineer San Francisco
Senior Windows Developer San Francisco

PRODUCT

Data Analyst San Francisco Senior Product Manager San Francisco

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eshvk
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough: OP referenced people at Beats with a data
background getting fired. This was the first I had ever heard about it, which
is why I asked for references. I remember they were trying to ramp up a team
from scratch crazy fast a few months back.

~~~
textminer
Posted details to another respondent.

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oliyoung
Beatport does one thing really well (sell music to producers & DJs - if you
make the Top 10, you're the IT producer for a couple of weeks) and several
things kinda half-assed (ie Beatport DJ is a poor man's Soundcloud).

This is just cleaning house before a refocus in 2014, a streaming service
being a priority.

Timing sucks though. Sucks hard.

~~~
gamegod
I can understand the desire to refocus as a streaming service, except that
there's no way for DJs to consume streaming content in their DJ sets (no DJ
software does this), and most DJs don't have internet connectivity when
they're gigging.

My guess is that if they do pivot towards being a streaming company, they'll
target EDM fans (consumers) instead of EDM DJs (prosumers).

~~~
delinka
I can't imagine why a DJ would trust his live show to any streaming assets. A
service interruption is certain to displease the crowd.

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fredfunk
songs that are added to the "Locker" are stored locally, so all tracks can be
played without an internet connection. the Locker itself is DRM'd (not the
tracks), so whitelisted applications (Traktor and Serato) can access the
folder and play the tracks without issue.

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nirvanatikku
Woah. I guess I could have seen this coming..?

I utilized their API for just under two years
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fm.asot](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fm.asot))
and several months back they just pulled access from everyone without any
insight. It took months of complaints before they started tending to
developers ([https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/beatport-
api](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/beatport-api)) and so I removed
the integration from my app. What a shame.

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alanctgardner2
Can anyone from the Bay Area comment on the frequency of these mass firings
among small companies? I'd never heard of it until recently, but I've seen a
couple now - at least this one seems to make sense, since there's a change in
direction. I've seen others which were wholesale re-orgs seemingly for the
hell of it.

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michaelochurch
Not from the Bay Area.

I would _much_ rather a startup do an announced layoff than the more common
thing, which is to write phony PIPs and make it look like performance-based
firings. A layoff, even when it's the right thing, is an admission of a
business problem and a signal that the company won't be hiring for a while.
But evil startups use "silent layoffs" to save their image ("we've never had a
layoff") at the expense of those let go.

I do wonder what kind of backstory there was if they were afraid of people
trashing the office. Usually people are pretty civilized when they are laid
off-- especially if there's a severance, which would be jeopardized by bad
behavior (if you vandalize the office, you get zero because the "severance" is
charges not being pressed). Being laid off sucks, but it's not worth
retaliating.

Constant re-orgs in small companies, for what it's worth, don't seem to be a
new thing either.

~~~
danso
In terms of having HR supervise the office firings...perhaps it had something
to do with the fact that SF was a satellite office and may have had
younger/less-tenured employees, and that the engineers being fired were pretty
much the whole team. It's a different mentality if you get fired and there's
no one else at the office to pick up your slack, and, if you're like the
stereotypical engineer in SF with plenty of other job opportunities.

Get a pack of such people with "little to lose" and otherwise reasonable
people may be unreasonable in these circumstances.

~~~
w0rd-driven
There's a few scenarios I can think of when a company thinks employees will
trash an office: The firing is particularly brutal The company was
particularly brutal to employees. Shitty conditions or pay The company can't
trust that they hired professionals Someone at HR is just a douche and can't
trust any of the above

There's likely more but that's all that counts. I hate the mentality. Unless
you're hiring 16 yr olds at McDonald's, do you really expect riots from your
professional workforce? They're better off being nowhere around such a shitty
place. Hopefully none of this comes as an added ding to a recommendation "Oh
you were one of _those employees_ that they were afraid of? Maybe you'll shiv
me in my sleep! Noez!!" yawn. I sense nothing but assholes from this place
because none of this feels positive in any way. How _not_ to fire someone
right here.

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jpmattia
> _“Once they went public, they started looking at the finances "_

Boy does that speak volumes about their IPO process.

~~~
danudey
Well you have to take a look at the results of your IPO and think 'Alright,
with what that cost and what we made, what position are we in?'

An IPO changes a lot of things about your company's situation; it's not
unimaginable that they looked before and took a gamble that an IPO would help,
and they afterwards they had to take a second, completely different look.

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reustle
> SFX seems convinced the live music business is more lucrative than recorded
> music, which has become harder to sell in the digital age.

This is nice to hear. Let me get to the music easily, and I'll gladly pay for
your shows & festivals.

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pistle
It's December. Once done chopping down the trees, it's time to take the axes
over the product/staff list in prep for Q1. Kids and start-ups don't get it.
Most post-startup companies, especially those in the tumult of M&A by equity
better be looking good to the people calling the dance.

Beatport likely doesn't experience a mad rush in the end of year, so they have
a decent idea what the revenue/EBITDA is going to look like. 6 devs in SF and
some in Denver could easily make that $1M loss on $12M revenue into break even
or better... and fast.

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camus2
Beatport killed the vinyl but will be dead in a few years too, Beatport hardly
makes money anymore.

Most Labels dont make money off Beatport either. It's just a promotional
tool(it cost more than it pays to produce tracks) it used to be "Get on the
top 10 and get booked".

It will be very hard for young EDM producers in the future, and for the whole
industry frankly.

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yetanotherphd
cool, sounds like a sensible decision.

And the "turning our culture into corporate profits" angle is kind of
ridiculous. That's what both companies were doing before and after these
layoffs. Is it somehow better to monetize culture when you channel some of
that money to unprofitable engineering teams?

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tobyjsullivan
Well, the good news for the rest of the tech community is now we have a new
pool of engineers to recruit. And I don't mean the ones laid off.

I mean the one's who were kept by SFX. They'll have virtually no moral or
illusions of job security and can probably be picked up incredibly easily.

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voltagex_
From a consumer perspective, I'll only go to Beatport if no other store is
offering a track I want. I'll even briefly consider ordering it on physical
media before paying Beatport's ridiculous WAV surcharge.

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trimbo
> The company worried employees would destroy the office if not supervised

That's just, wow.

~~~
fourstar
Would you expect anything less after hiring "rockstar programmers"?

~~~
Grue3
Good thing they didn't hire any ninjas, or I'd be worried about safety of
those HR guys.

