
Twitter Is Considering a Deal to Buy SoundCloud - coloneltcb
http://recode.net/2014/05/19/twitter-is-considering-a-deal-to-buy-soundcloud/
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k-mcgrady
As an avid SoundCloud user I hope this doesn't happen. Twitter's past attempts
at music have been terrible and I don't see why SoundCloud needs someone to
acquire it. They're pretty much the default place for musicians (pro and
amateur) to host their music and they have a decent way to monetise users.

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maaarghk
I agree. Being acquired by Twitter just makes it more likely that SoundCloud
will fail, to me - have Twitter actually come up with a decent monetisation
strategy yet?

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aclements18
Well Twitter made about $665 million last year, with much larger projections
for this year. I would say that qualifies as "decent".

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ceejayoz
Twitter lost $645 million in 2013. I'm not sure "spend $2 to make $1"
necessarily qualifies as "decent".

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aclements18
They didn't lose $645 million in spending, it was a one time recognition of
the stock they already allocated.

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ceejayoz
They've still yet to make a profit.

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Fuzzwah
Strange. Twitter bought We Are Hunted and turned it into twitter #music and
killed that off a couple of months ago.

Now they're thinking about soundcloud? I can't see how it ends well for
anyone.

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aclements18
They also got rid of the person leading that deal and the Twitter Music app
that they shut down. They appear to be taking a new approach that goes beyond
what is trending.

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logn
I like this acquisition compared to alternatives. Google would Google-plus-ify
it which would be bad. Facebook would absorb it into the newsfeed and fan
pages. Apple would make it even more of a walled garden and part of iTunes.

Twitter's ideal tweeter (in my mind) is someone who publishes things regularly
(authors, journalists, artists) and so I think SoundCloud will fit right in. I
think it's a lot smarter entry into music for Twitter than say Last.fm or
Pandora, because Twitter is gaining access directly to musicians as users.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "I like this acquisition compared to alternatives. Google would Google-
plus-ify it which would be bad. Facebook would absorb it into the newsfeed and
fan pages. Apple would make it even more of a walled garden and part of
iTunes."

How about they other alternative - not getting acquired? They're one of the
few big websites with a decent monetisation strategy other than 'collect
personal data and put ads on it'.

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kitsune_
I'm on my second year with a paid pro unlimited account and would probably
reconsider renewing it if they were bought by Twitter. SoundCloud is already
moving into a direction that I don't particularly like and this might be the
last straw.

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larrys
"SoundCloud is already moving into a direction that I don't particularly like"

What direction is that that you are referring to?

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quest88
The direction where more people start using it.

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joelrunyon
Twitter, Soundcloud and Instagram are about the only networks I actually enjoy
using. (YouTube is used out of necessity and FB is well...FB).

I'd like to see twitter pick them up just so Google / FB doesn't do it.

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adrianwaj
Some interesting possibilities - but my first reaction was to vomit. (I use sc
to push out my tracks.)

Carefully following and unfollowing sc users makes sense; and music and the sc
stream to me is much more fun than the twitter one. I don't like getting all
the sc reposts (I'd like that filtered out, whilst providing artists with a
way to push out messages (which can be filtered out too))... anyway, the best
thing for sc to do is have some sort of bitcoin integration.. tracking plays
and allowing tip distributions from a listener's wallet to a producer's (and
sc can take a commission and provide stats, and also give artists insight into
their most valuable fans.) That'd actually be good for music (but twitter
won't have any such vision.) After that, sc should do something with video or
tickets. If anyone should buy sc, it should be yt - the other big music
discovery platform.

If I were sc, I'd tell twitter to go shove it -- unless there are financial
imperatives that make that unfeasible.

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mullingitover
As long as it's not Yahoo buying them, I'm ok with this. Getting bought by
Yahoo seems to be the kiss of death, and by death I mean a long slide into
irrelevance.

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tannerc
Tumblr seems to be doing well. Their recent mobile app update brings some
interestingness to the mobile blogging experience.

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irace
Thanks :)

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borat4prez
For what? :)

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gamegoblin
User irace is an engineer at tumblr, apparently.

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ChuckFrank
A successful deep integration between these two services would be block
buster. If they pull it off, it would be an absolutely amazing pairing.

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jonathanjaeger
SoundCloud is way too big and embedded across the net for Twitter to shut them
down (as some people seem to fear in the comments). This would not go down the
way of Posterous or We Are Hunted, the former of which was already not going
to continue because they had essentially lost to tumblr and the latter of
which was more of an experiment.

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anateus
imeem was pretty big and embedded when it was shut down unceremoniously by
myspace. So that is no protection. I don't think Twitter is likely to do that
though.

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gdilla
I think at this point, in the age of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Tumblr
acquisitions, it would be disastrous if Twitter's strategy is anything but let
soundcloud continue as a separate entity. The more you leave big and
established platforms well enough alone, the better.

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mcintyre1994
Heh, it seems like $1B is the required valuation to get to stay independent.
Definitely agree though, you don't acquihire at that price so don't screw up a
working formula. Interesting that 2/3 of your examples are Facebook
acquisitions too, they seem to be handling big acquisitions really well.

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gdilla
True, let's add Nest and Waze to the mix!

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ebspelman
I haven't seen the Google/YouTube comparison on here yet. SoundCloud seems
like the default place for audio uploads, similar (but not perfectly
analogous) to YouTube for video circa 2006. Youtube has maintained a huge
amount of independence from Google, to the point where the Twitch rumors from
last week were all titled as, "YouTube to buy Twitch," or something close to
that[1]. A similar partnership between Twitter/SoundCloud could work well.

[1] [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/youtube-to-buy-twitch-
for-1...](http://www.gamespot.com/articles/youtube-to-buy-twitch-
for-1-billion-report/1100-6419720/)

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saaaaaam
This will be interesting if it happens. The big issue with SoundCloud is that,
so long as they have been a gutsy startup acting as a promotional platform for
music, rights-holders have stood back and let them exist. I would imagine that
an acquisition by a company like Twitter would bring down all sorts of legal
complexity - as with YouTube's acquisition by Google. If rights holders pushed
for a backdated payment against copyright music on SoundCloud it could be
hugely expensive, unless they've quietly managed to put something in place to
get around this.

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joshjdr
So they can shut it down like Posterous? F*ck that...

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joelrunyon
Seriously - posterous was awesome.

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underwater
Twitter itself was a a spin-off from Odeo
([http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-
interesting/](http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/)) which
was a podcasting/audio sharing service.

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ulfw
Oh no. Poor SoundCloud.

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nc
I wonder if this leak is aimed at putting pressure on Twitter to buy.

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barkingcat
No! Please don't.

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leccine
I hope they buy it and write a better UI for it. I love the idea but the UI is
a big drawback of using it.

