Lew later soundcloud8/24/2023 ![]() SoundCloud's Repost Network Called Out By Artists for Past 'Predatory' Practices “Quite frankly there are other players where you get 100% or the monthly or annual fee is so low or free that it just makes sense to go with someone else. “There is the reality of competition and what others are doing,” Chan acknowledged. ![]() One employee wondered aloud whether this model was the most enticing for rising artists in a crowded distribution landscape where rival companies offer lower rates: “I’m thinking of the other distributors, our competition, they pay 100% of royalties, and we’re taking a 20% cut… for the regular Joe uploading music that they want to monetize, what’s the value they’re getting as opposed to another distributor giving them 100%?” This is going to necessitate us taking a different strategy.” (Overall, SoundCloud is “a growing business,” the SoundCloud spokesperson said.)Ĭreators who do choose to work with SoundCloud can currently sign up for its distribution service, Repost, for $30 a year those acts keep 80% of the royalties they make from other streaming services, while Repost keeps 20%. ![]() “There are tons of articles ‘the independent sector is growing, the DIY sector is growing,'” Chan continued. But Chan told his colleagues in August that “one thing that’s important to call out is if you track the creator numbers over time, we’re relatively flat. A source familiar with the company’s operations says it initially hoped to increase its creator subscription total from under 600,000 to 1 million by the end of 2022. One of Chan’s chief concerns with SoundCloud’s current outlook, according to his comments from one meeting, is that the creator business has plateaued. Picking The Right Distributor: 7 Tips For Indie Artists “There’s gonna be a lot of stuff where we have to figure out, what do we do now?” “In talking with a lot of folks, there are certain kinds of processes or internal products that we wish worked differently,” Chan added minutes later. “When these kind of mass events happen, quite frankly things are gonna break because there are people who had specialized knowledge ,” Chan said, according to employee recordings of all-hands meetings that were reviewed and verified by Billboard. Still, Tracy Chan, who recently joined SoundCloud as a senior vice president, was blunt about the challenges the company will face in the coming months during the staff meeting. Change can be difficult.”īut Seton emphasized that “as we’re driving this change in the organization, we want to be clear that we’re doing this from a position of strength.” “We’re double digit growth right now,” he said. In an interview, Eliah Seton, SoundCloud’s president, said that “every day the list of companies that are going through cost reductions grows.” He added that, with “the last several months of driving transformation through the organization, and then the cost reductions, we understand that’s a lot for people to live through. These comments speak to the challenges faced by a growing number of music companies that are hoping to service independent and DIY artists - offering marketing and distribution, for example - and harness their power amid stiff competition, especially at a time when the economic climate is uncertain. In Its New Era, Can SoundCloud Go From Career Launchpad to Destination? ![]() Offering unvarnished opinions behind closed doors, employees and even a senior executive worried about several key components of SoundCloud, saying that its creator business lacked robust growth, that competing distributors offer more artist-friendly rates, and that the company’s “product is not working super great,” among other things. (That number was 359 employees as of December 2020, the last year for which a public filing is available.) In an email to employees, Weissman said the layoffs were needed due to “the challenging economic climate and financial market headwinds” in a meeting the next day, he added that “inflation and geo-instability” stemming from the first half of the year “acutely affects our advertising business.” Still, Weissman’s email to staff underscored that SoundCloud would remain “laser focused on our mission to lead what is next in music.”Ĭomments from inside a pair of SoundCloud’s recent all-hands meetings - one open to every employee, one for those on the creator team - however, indicate that some staffers are trying to figure out how to achieve the company’s lofty goals with a now-reduced workforce. Seven months later, SoundCloud announced that it was cutting 20% of its workforce. “What we’re trying to pull together is the next great, big iconic music company of the future,” CEO Michael Weissman told Billboard. In January, SoundCloud executives were bullish about the company’s future.
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