SoundCloud hosting platform for Sale for over $1 billion
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In a deal that may total over $1 billion, audio hosting platform SoundCloud is looking for new ownership.
According to Sky News, the two primary SC shareholders, Raine Group and Temasek Holdings have begun preparations for the company’s potential auction by consulting investment banks.
The impressive scale of the SC evaluation is down to a major financial turnaround since 2017. Back then, the company was deep in debt, but with the essential investment of $170 million, it managed to stay on course.
SoundCloud for Sale
There has been some considerable downsizing of personnel in recent years, with 20 percent of the staff laid off in August 2022, with a further eight percent retrenched in May last year.
However, after serving as the Company’s president since 2021, Eliah Seton took over as CEO in 2023 and has steered SC steadily back into the realm of profitability.
Since the platform was launched in Berlin in 2007, over 320 million tracks have been published on SoundCloud from over 40 million artists.
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As a platform, SoundCloud has played a major cultural role in the musical landscape over the past nearly two decades, especially when it comes to breaking artists in the Hip-Hop and Electronic music spheres.
What will this change in ownership mean for SoundCloud users in future? Will it continue to play such an important role in the music industry, or will it find new ways to monetize its services like every other tech platform?
Give us your take in the comments!
More about SoundCloud:
- SoundCloud Official Newsroom
- More about SoundCloud
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7 responses to “SoundCloud hosting platform for Sale for over $1 billion”
I don’t see anything wrong with a company monetizing its services.
If SC allowed users to sell music for a cut, then they’d have an edge on bandcamp in a couple ways, and BC would still have an edge on SC in some ways. They currently both have their own niche, and probably the majority of users use both–artists/sellers/fans/buyers alike. I think the ultimate uniqueness of both platforms is that any artist can post their music on the site, whether you’re a kid in your bedroom or you’re a multi-platinum artist with a record label.
For me, one of the main things missing from BC is a messaging system or a way for people to interact with each other. For example, as a fan, you can see that another user has X-number of releases in common, yet you can’t see a list of which releases it is. And if you’re able to scroll down and find them, you can’t send them a message to talk about it.
That said, I could accept the reasoning behind them not going full comment-section. BC seems more set up to be an artist-to-fan platform and more professional, while SC is geared more as a social media platform.
(I feel like SC even started out as like an “audio Facebook” with things like the default title being “sounds from day-month-year-time”. I have quite a few friends who initially had a SC for no reason other than it being the new social site to try, and they’ve since abandoned it.)
Also, if a company is able to make money and make things work, then they’re more likely to continue providing their service.
I don’t have an opinion whether or not they should monetize. If they’re finding success with just ads and premium…lol wait, aren’t they already monetized? Or is it only called “monetization” if it’s the users, as opposed to company itself? (That’s a genuine question there. I’m not being snarky.)
Anyway, if their current format is working, then I’d understand why they might want to stick with it. But I’d also understand if they implemented sales. As it stands, everyone on SC who is interested in selling (and even people who don’t care about selling, but they want a more structured way to release a library of music), they link to their BC. It would make sense if SC wanted to keep some of those transactions on their own site.
Currently, BC/SC each has their own niche, not to mention the other platforms with other structures out there (iTunes, etc). Even if SC implemented sales, each site is still geared differently.
SoundCloud was great at the beginning and allowed music to evolve. Enter greed. Goodbye SC. Hello ads and other cash-grab tactics/ pop-ups and P4P scam, absolutely destroying the experience. The UI alone is just gross. Sad it came to that.
For musicians, you can still post music as easily as before. Correct me if I’m wrong, but nothing has changed in that regard.
If you care to explain, I also don’t understand how SC uniquely enabled music to evolve. That’s aside from the basic premise of allowing anyone to easily upload music and interact with each other, which is still in place.
And what is wrong with grabbing cash? A company needs to make money in order to continue providing services. And if that’s not true (again, correct me if I’m wrong), then I personally don’t see anything wrong with a company doing so.
If you want to say goodbye to SC, that’s more likely to happen if they had no revenue.
You can follow the trail of articles on gearnews alone. “SC struggling”, “financial difficulties”, etc. The end of SC comes when they can’t make money, or if they can’t find a buyer willing to pump money into it.
soundCloud just needs to set itself up as a competitor to Spotify. It only needs a few major independent artist to use it as a streaming platform get the adverts in and then Kate which independent artist will be on there and start to pay them a fair rate soon you will have major (Artist) who are out of their deals wanting to be on SoundCloud. It would turn very profitable very quickly, and be a place where musicians could help that their material ends up being streamed from instead of the lonely summons that we get from Spotify
If they let the majors onto SC it will just end up like Myspace did, a commercial backwater with all the more niche stuff buried. MS in it’s heyday was imho the best site for independent artists as it allowed a proper profile with pics, videos and messaging. SC, BC etc all seem to fall short in this respect. Small and starting up artists need help to get recognition and traction, and certainly Spotify with its new ruling that you need at least 1000 streams to even start getting paid is no help there!
Are majors not allowed on SC? Seems to me like they just don’t use it. But I’ve seen many artists on there that are signed to majors, unless I’m misunderstanding what major means. There’s a verified Billie Eilish page, and she’s signed to Interscope.
I agree about MS, but at least SC has social features like comment/reply/DM, etc. They are a social platform, although not as customizable as MS was.
Bandcamp seems to have backtracked in that regard, at least on mobile. You’re no longer able to enlarge people’s profile images, which makes detailed ones essentially illegible. Not that that’s super important to me, but it’s the only recent change they’ve made to the site’s “sociability”, and instead of a tiny step forward, it’s a tiny and odd step backward.
I wonder why Audiomack is so less known