
Twitter in talks to buy online music firm SoundCloud - adventured
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/05/us-twitter-deals-idUSKBN0EG0XW20140605
======
bri3d
I don't think Twitter would buy SoundCloud for audio Tweets or podcasts.

Rather, I'd argue that SoundCloud is the #1 source of up-and-coming music on
the Web today. Between play and upload information from SoundCloud and mention
and trend information from Twitter, Twitter could easily become a content-
discovery powerhouse. Information about the "next big thing" will always hold
value for marketers, and access to the trendsetters who are consuming the
"next big thing" is worth even more.

Between their folded #music attempt based on We Are Hunted and their recent
acquisition of Gnip, it's obvious that Twitter are trying to expand and sell
their role as a destination for information about the up-and-coming.

That's why they'd buy SoundCloud - Twitter could let marketers learn what's
hot next, who's consuming it, and then allow them turn around and sell ads
directly to those influencers.

~~~
sb23
Reminds me of MySpace.

~~~
bobbles
The funny thing is before twitter was twitter it was birthed within Odeo,
which could be compared as the soundcloud of the time

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odeo)

------
przemoc
It's amazing how much effort SC put in making UI more sleek yet degrading UX
thoroughly.

Stream is useless in its current form. It's much inferior to Dashboard (which
wasn't perfect in the first place, but was quite usable, contrary to that
one). For people taking SC activities seriously, like trying to listen most of
the tracks coming from people they follow, there must be a way to
hide/collapse tracks that were already listened to (like removing in
dashboard). What about favorites of people I follow? I maybe not use it
extensively, but it's a great way to discover new tracks. Dashboard provides
it all and has a few tabs with different filtering and independent hiding
(removing) and I would fix only this independence - removing entry in one tab
should be enough and work for the other ones too - and improve the "More"
button, to load at once everything that is left.

What should be clearly told is that new UI is definitely against any more
thorough comments. Come on, showing only a few words? It's like you encourage
SCers to leave these useless comments. And there is no place for discussion at
all. Personally I like to discuss things. Yet I understand others that don't
like comments at all on SC (because well, they are in fact often completely
useless, as lot of SC users can express only praises or nothing), so they
should be able to easily hide them.

Where are the features that everyone hoped for? Where are the marks next to
the tracks that I already commented on them (and how many comments that were)?
Where are the marks next to tracks that I already listened to? SoundCloud Next
that was turned to be default is still more of a disaster than improvement.
And it's sad.

Somehow this I-don't-care-about-UX-but-let's-make-it-look-sexier-at-least
attitude is becoming quite popular in internet, which is a paradox, because
nowadays the opposite mind should be predominant. GitHub did in the last few
years similar changes (they had a few good ones too, though) and had to
disable comments in their blog to stop the never ending complaints... Another
thing: less is more, but too less isn't more at all. You have to preserve some
basic functionality, otherwise removing features is like slapping users in the
face. Here I can give Minus as an example - file sharing site that turned back
into media sharing site w/ most of the features removed.

I think about doing some sane front-end using their API, but I always lack
time to do stuff after hours...

If being bought by Twitter will help SC crew work better on UX, then I really
hope it will happen. Otherwise it won't really change anything.

------
adamnemecek
I thought that the most recent news was that the deal was off
[http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2014/06/04/addition-
soundcloud...](http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2014/06/04/addition-soundcloud-
twitter-also-reportedly-considered-acquiring-pandora-spotify/)

~~~
squints
thought I heard that too... interesting

------
cloudwalking
Please buy Soundcloud. They have a great product that hasn't made many
improvements in the last couple years. Hopefully an acquisition by Twitter
would give them the resources they need to thrive, without too much negative
oversight. (Vine is an example of a very successful Twitter acquisition.)

~~~
gkya
> [SoundCloud hasn't] made many improvements in the last couple years.

What, do you think, needs improvement?

I use the application for recording and storing occasional riffs I come up
with as private tracks, and to listen to new music from people I follow
occasionally. As far as I've experienced, they need not make a big improvement
over the site as it is now, but given that I'm not a _power user_ , I might
have missed lots of stuff.

~~~
cloudwalking
The one that annoys me the most is playback. Songs will often stop playing
randomly. It only seems to happen with the web client, not the iOS app, but it
happens on a lot of different computers and people I have talked to.

~~~
twrkit
Yeah I've experienced that too, I always assumed it was their equivalent of
Pandora's "are you still there?" only without politely asking before shutting
it off

------
felixbraun
Super interesting -- but Soundcloud won't come cheap (they raised at a $700mm
valuation in January [1] and are doing really well).

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/25/soundcloud-
raises-60-millio...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/25/soundcloud-
raises-60-million-at-700-million-valuation/)

------
wellboy
Berlin startup exit, it is dearly needed! We almost have no first generation
entrepreneurs here, all we got is basically Samwer brothers.

~~~
k-mcgrady
IMO it's cooler that Berlin has a company like SoundCloud that makes money! I
don't know the numbers but base don what they're charging and the number of
people I see with pro accounts they've got to be making decent revenues. Much
cooler than a company that makes no money and gets bought by one of the big
tech companies.

~~~
wellboy
I don't think they actually make a lot of money as they have to pay a lot for
infrastructure, though they have a LOT of traffic and imho that's not a bad
thing. Products with a lot of traffic like Snapchat or Secret are amazing.
They could all make money if they wanted, but they choose to build up the
community instead.

------
e12e
Uh-oh. Are there any other companies than Whisper System that had an actual
end-user product that Twitter has acquired -- and then _not_ killed off?

I don't recognize that many from:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Twitter)

Except for Dabble DB (Smallthought Systems) and Posterous:

[http://blog.dabbledb.com/2010/06/140character-
dabbling.html](http://blog.dabbledb.com/2010/06/140character-dabbling.html)

[http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4281780/posterous-is-
shutt...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4281780/posterous-is-shutting-
down-tomorrow-here-are-the-best-alternatives)

I hadn't realize how extra-cruel the dabbledb thing was until I read this:

[https://blog.twitter.com/2010/more-
dabbling](https://blog.twitter.com/2010/more-dabbling)

"Up until about a year ago, we[twitter] used an online database called Dabble
DB to track and share information about our projects internally. While we’ve
since moved that project management tool in-house (...)" [In other words: we
realize this was a great product, and we still killed it, because, meh profits
for twitter?"]

For those that didn't know what DabbleDB was:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY)

So, while an acquisition might be great for the owners of soundcloud, I'm
rather terrified as a user...

~~~
aaronbrethorst
I'm sure there are others, but these are the ones I know off the top of my
head:

* Summize -> search.twitter.com

* Tweetie -> Twitter for iPhone

* TweetDeck

* Vine

* Crashlytics

* MoPub

* Gnip

~~~
e12e
Thanks, I suppose I should have been a little more specific -- I'm not
surprised Summize, Tweetie, Gnip and TweetDeck lives on. That said,
Crashlytics, MoPub and Vine does seem to indicate that not every Twitter
acquisition of an "independent" product leads to product death.

------
mongol
According to Swedish media, refering to Financial Times, Twitter is in talks
to acquire Spotify as well. Link that I can't visit:
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7ad44fd2-ec08-11e3-ab1b-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7ad44fd2-ec08-11e3-ab1b-00144feabdc0.html)

~~~
felixbraun
Twitter raised $2.1 billion in its IPO -- Spotify is valued north of $4
billion.

~~~
smackfu
Twitter's market cap is $20 billion, which is more relevant.

------
ianstallings
It's going to be funny when we reach the end of this _social road_ and we're
all back on myspace essentially. Customizable personalized spaces where we
share music, videos, and pictures of food.

Tom Anderson is my hero. The guy lives on a new beach every week while
Zuckerberg is working 24/7 to rebuild myspace.

------
computerjunkie
As an individual who enjoys listening to music on SoundCloud, this acquisition
would be great!

SoundCloud is an amazing platform for music discovery and streaming. I tried
Spotify for a while but I returned to SoundCloud. SoundCloud seems to get “out
of the way”. I always find better music you would never hear in regulated
mainstream music. There are a lot of talented artists who truly enjoy making
good music on the platform that probably deserve to be in the Charts but they
cannot afford to get record label deals.

With Twitter behind them, this could mean artists have a chance to get their
work discovered faster. I hope this acquisition becomes a reality.

------
tom3k
As it so happens I've just launched a service built on top of SoundCloud.
voliyo.com (non-mobile for now) aims to help musicians and photographers
expose their content to a larger audience, and on the flip side, allows you to
find new music whilst sitting back and enjoying a photo slide show!

If any photographers/musicians are interested in trying out the private beta,
PM me and I'll happily dish out the invite links :)

------
pothibo
Interesting that both are/were part of Fred Wilson's portfolio . I wonder if
there's other in talks with Soundcloud.

------
hardoncollider
Can any company survive on their own anymore? Need every one of them be
absorbed by already oversized entities?

Vine is nothing without a distribution method, so that kind of acquisition
makes sense.

If Facebook turns to Shitbook, I really don't want SoundCloud impacted,
because they're unassociated and can thrive independently.

------
squints
Strategically beneficial for both in my opinion. Soundcloud could really use
some help in terms of product design in my opinion. UI/UX could be a lot
better. Maybe twitter team could help move that along

------
mayeesha
Interesting. I'd be assuming it's for making audio tweets, but even then it's
kind of restricting. Putting voice in front of other people is something
people might not still be ready for.

~~~
ntaso
With text/tweets, you can process the text and what it is about at a glance.
With video, you have thumbnails and they usually give you a good idea what to
expect from that video. With audio, there's nothing. I think people are not
ready for that, because audio only is so hard to filter and "consume" without
having to listen to it.

~~~
chrischen
There's speech to text. Even if inaccurate, it gives somewhat of a preview
that the user can edit.

~~~
gkya
What if the _audio-tweet_ contained no words?

------
larakerns
This is super smart – Soundcloud needs to integrate more deeply with the hype
/ discovery abilities of Twitter.

Soundcloud songs overlaid on Vine vids, etc. could prove amazing as well.

------
pgtruesdell
I think this could be an interesting move for Twitter. Especially for
podcasting, since Twitter started out as Odeo, and pivoted due to lackluster
interest in the medium.

~~~
Touche
What is Soundcloud's relation to podcasting? I'm not familiar.

~~~
joeyspn
It is used by many people, I listen the Andreessen & Horowitz's podcast
there... [https://soundcloud.com/a16z](https://soundcloud.com/a16z)

Besides that, it is also the perfect app to upload and share fart sounds...

[https://soundcloud.com/royalty-free-musicfactory/fart-
sound-...](https://soundcloud.com/royalty-free-musicfactory/fart-sound-
effects)

------
glomph
I hope this doesn't happen.

~~~
schwap
Why? (Not snarky, genuinely curious)

~~~
recursive
I'm not the poster you're responding to, but I fear it would make SoundCloud
more like Twitter, which would be a bad thing from my point of view. I like
SoundCloud. Twitter annoys me.

------
return0
Incidentally, what are your soundclouds?

------
mayeesha
i don't think it's podcasting anymore, but making the tweets really small like
1 minute or 50 seconds might be making people more interested in speaking
infront of an audience, but if it's online music streaming they could choose
rdio instead of soundcloud.

~~~
Kiro
I don't think you can compare SoundCloud with Rdio. Two completely different
services.

------
relampago
NOOO

------
8ig8
Audio tweets?

------
bgilroy26
An annotated soundcloud track is part of Jeff Tweedy of Wilco's promotion for
his new solo album.

[http://www.stereogum.com/1684887/tweedy-ill-sing-
it/mp3s/](http://www.stereogum.com/1684887/tweedy-ill-sing-it/mp3s/)

