SoundCloud Launches Subscription Service

Jason Tate Mar 29, 2016

Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for The Verge, on SoundCloud’s new subscription service.

Though anyone can create a SoundCloud account and upload songs unworthy of your time, some huge artists also use it to publish tracks that you won’t find anywhere else. Kanye West, for instance, posted a new song over the weekend that you won’t even find on Tidal. It’s his fourth track exclusive to SoundCloud.
But bonus tracks only go so far. What matters for a subscription music service is how many paid tracks are available, and SoundCloud Go appears to have far fewer than its top competitors. SoundCloud is advertising a library of 125 million songs, but at least 110 million of those are free, user-uploaded tracks. While Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, and the other big streaming services have around 30 million paid songs, SoundCloud Go appears to include closer to 15 million.

This feels like a divergence from what makes SoundCloud unique.

SoundCloud Lost $70m in Two Years

Jason Tate Feb 14, 2016

Cyrus Farivar, writing for Ars Technica, looks at the losses that are apparently piling up for SoundCloud.

New financial records released by SoundCloud show that the company has nearly doubled its losses from 2013 to 2014—those two years combined account for a total of €62.1 million ($70.3 million) in losses. […] With mounting losses, the company’s board of directors wrote that there are “material uncertainties facing the business.”

Is SoundCloud Worth More Than Spotify?

Jason Tate Feb 1, 2016

Alex Moazed, writing for TechCrunch, on why SoundCloud may be more valuable than Spotify in the long run:

SoundCloud has a platform business model where its content is created by its network of users, not acquired through licensing deals. For SoundCloud, the more audio producers that join the network, the more listeners will want to join. This increase in users, in turn, incentivizes more creatives to post their music or podcasts on SoundCloud, and the network effects continue to build from there.
In contrast, Spotify is primarily a reseller of music inventory owned by record labels and publishers. It’s simply a distributor for the latest releases, sort of like a Walmart for music streaming. Most of the songs on Spotify you could find on Apple Music, Pandora or another streaming service. As a result, Spotify lacks the network effects that SoundCloud enjoys.

But what if Spotify, or Apple Music (or Facebook, or YouTube), adds in the features that SoundCloud currently provides? Does SoundCloud have a monetization strategy that can scale or do they risk being a just a feature in someone else’s business?