SoundCloud operated at a loss of £18.1m in 2013

[John Clees]

SoundCloud operated at a loss of £18.1m in 2013
http://www.mixmag.net/news/soundcloud-p ... n-in-loses

Why am i not surprised. that would explain a previous post this year about added commercials too. Greed seems to have caught up with them.

[Roy Koch]

Greed seems to have caught up with them? Please explain!

[John Clees]

Certainly! Just my personal opinion based on my experience. Some history first. I've had my own website for over 12 years and have been distributing my own music for a long time. just my releases alone have generated more than 50,000 downloads just the past 5 years that I can track on the same hostings company, so coming from that perspective, I've always been a little skeptical of SoundCloud.

I think the idea of SoundCloud helped a lot of artists get their music heard and actually have a domain that they can refer people to but in end : business is business . I never really got into SoundCloud too much until about a year or two ago. The amount of money that they charge would be at least 3 times more more than id been spending for my own website + hosting to actually host what I do now.

A year or two ago I wanted to have the space on Soundcloud to post on Facebook for an event and I ended up grading my account. Then after I upgraded my account, months later they gave me a "deal" to upgrade it even further. Honestly I upgraded it twice and was lost in actually the "type" and "cost" of the account I had for just a short period of time. After the time has expired, I personally felt that it created a need for me to be spending over a hundred a year or more just to maintain the traffic or the idea to be heard on Soundcloud for that project, as I'm already paying for my private domain too. As if it was done with intent to create profit in building codependent system where an artist will spend the money to get a project going but not know they'd spend three times as much later on to have longevity with the project. Needless to say a lot of the stuff that I had on there the discounted rate i removed 6 -8 months later because I didn't want to spend the normal "adjusted" price later, after spending the entire year building their website on their platform only to have it be gone later.

They also partnered with Facebook as well. No surprise here, as I feel they are taking a page out of facebook completely. In the end to me it's no different then Facebook getting people into a system that creates a need, then once you have that need everything changes. FB tries to get money from their users to promote their business while they create algorithms so your viewers don't see your post, nearly forcing you to want to try to pay in order to get the exposure you always used to have. The FB experience just seems like aggressive marketing tool that squeezes money for someone. Sure it's free, and in the end they make up and create their own rules. It's also called answering to your investors and stock share holders as well. Now SoundCloud has this "business option" as well. Perhaps it's just "smart business" but if you continue to create an environment as such, people can, will, and did leave.

I think a crucial key element to any marketing, more specifically music and unlimited exposure with free downloads is longevity. After having such longevity at my server, I see year after year certain projects get hot linked, projects that are there for 5 years old spike. For example my live set 4 years later got three times as many downloads that all the years previous 4-5 years after it was released. Having your own domain has more longevity, unlimited potential, and benefit verse being codependent in a convenient system has been my experience looking back after having done both.

sure you have to pay for the domain and hosting company however I just feel it's more independent and beneficial to do it yourself after having jumped in. They can can limit the downloads, raise their rates, and change the policy at any time, having artist participants having to cater to the changes they see fit, at their convenience, answering to investing partners perhaps. It takes a long time to build consistent traffic, it's a long road, but in the end you building your own company and promote your site, and play by your own rules vs someone else's, and a "system" if you will that can and will change at any moment to continue to make more profits.

Also all these premium accounts people had, I think after having it once, many (myself included) decided it wasn't any where worth the cost and didn't choose to continue the "plan" the following year which has also contributed to the magnitude of 18 million loss of profit. Had no idea they were bank rolling like that.. it's smart business for them but in the end builds a system where : more you feed into : the more you have to, and the more you're at their complete mercy.

[apanell]

i operated soundcloud at a loss of 0$!

[John Clees]

Haha. Exactly. Its best used just for free, but you are capped at 100 downloads. host it somewhere else too : but it's hassle free.
Big circle back to the start.

[Alert]

FB tries to get money from their users to promote their business while they create algorithms so your viewers don't see your post, nearly forcing you to want to try to pay in order to get the exposure you always used to have.

Such sneaky fucks.