Soundcloud could be forced to close after massive losses...

[Axis1~SL61]

Yes, I thought that was kind of his point, that they attract independents and then as the service grows they try to leverage that audience in service to larger acts. It's really just exploitation though, they were never there to listen to gaga in the first place.

The value of such a service to me is exactly what I'm experiencing right now as I type this. I just got my first follower on hearthis.at and I'm listening to his work, which is really weird, and really cool. I find that inspiring, I have time for that.

I'd rather have 10 potential friends who might be collaborators, or not, than have 100 or even 10,000 fans. As a completely amateur musician, the hobby isn't about selling records, for this kind of music I don't think that it ever could be without a lot of something else to back it up, e.g., a lot of skill, bona-fides, luck, money, hotness. It's just about enjoying the creation and connecting with others who do the same.

I totally agree with what you said above, too

[Axis1~SL61]

once they see thousands, maybe millions of unsigned musos' accounts on their site, they begin to think "wow, what if they could all be USED as FANS to be somehow "sold" to the majors in the industry"...

I don't think this is the main reason for the inevitable fall of myspace/sc-like. The problem is that the crowd attracts vultures. Guys who want to rip you off, sell you fans or listens, show you naked pictures (for whatever reason), or just guys (somehow it's always guys), who will slap "dude, cool" comment on a thousand tracks in hope to achieve world wide fame. Sites like that should really have a selection system of some kind, or garbage will just flow in. While Soundcloud, with all new improvements, is doing what they can to attract more and more of such audience.

That too, but I've not seen so much of that in mp3.com and iuma.com (maybe the oldest sites of the kind), as I've seen of what I mentioned...

[cdverson]

Im pretty sure another company will buy them out. Soundcloud is too big to fail.

[Zombie Queen]

Soundcloud is too big to fail.

Remember myspace.

[DJ Warmonger]

Soundcloud is too big to fail.

Remember myspace.

Myspace failed for me when their bug-reporting utility turned out to be buggy. Soundcloud is working and popular, just has silly business model.

[Ghostwave]

I really how serious it is this time.
Should I remove the SC integration in my little soundset shop and move to my own HTML5-based player?
I could still post the tracks on SC but wouldn't really be affected if they shut down.

[Obsolete236871]

I hope they won't shut down. To me Soundcloud is the number one site on the Web for independent talent to present themselves and for music fans to discover these atists in the first place. I can only guess that the infrastructure behind it is quite expensive (servers etc) and that they need a reliable model to finance the whole venture (including paying highly skilled coders and other staff).

Ideally, the whole venture would self-finance, but it obviously doesn't right now. As a streaming service for listeners, they are probably competing with players such as Spotify and Tidal, that have their own issues with running a profitable model. There are so many players offering quite similar services. For example: Soundcloud could join hands with Bandcamp and unify both quite similar concepts under one roof, offering the best of both worlds to artists and listeners alike.

[Gonga]

I'd rather have 10 potential friends who might be collaborators, or not, than have 100 or even 10,000 fans... It's just about enjoying the creation and connecting with others who do the same.

Exactly. Connecting with other musicians on the music.

[ghettosynth]

...

[Obsolete236871]

You seem to have very precise expectations of what a platform like Soundcloud should offer as a "listening device". I'm going there to discover music and new artists. I couldn't care less about the algorithms* behind it, since the way I use Soundcloud doesn't depend on these algorithms. Algorithm-dependent: is that generally the way you use digital online media? Expecting an algorithm to do all the research for you? Are you also watching every nonsense video that Youtube recommends to you?

Bottom line: Maybe the more consumption oriented passive user needs algorithms to help him find great music, but I use Soundcloud as an active user - actively browsing, checking my favourite artists favourite artists or listening to new songs by people whom I follow and discovered previously through various channels (real life friends recommendations, music magazines, blogs ...).

*though I find the issue of machine-learning and algorithms quite interesting in theory, but it doesn't play a big role in the way I consume media. Most recommendation algorithms (eg. in Youtube, Facebook, on web sites in general) do not work for me and I don't need them.

[ghettosynth]

...

[sig-ex]

soundcloud seems to be taking action by cropping profile pictures into circles.

[Sampleconstruct]

soundcloud seems to be taking action by cropping profile pictures into circles.

They need to do more over-designing to justify the crazy wages they pay themselves.

[shroom81]

soundcloud seems to be taking action by cropping profile pictures into circles.

They need to do more over-designing to justify the crazy wages they pay themselves.

Amen to that! All them euros for wages and still pretty much none functioning search engine... I could sure do with 100.000 euros pr year, think they're hiring ?

[cron]

Oh my word! Just looked and sure enough everyone has a circular profile pic now. Who on earth chooses a circle as their a first choice template when it comes to designing anything? Oh well, there's every user having to design a new profile pic now - and presumably it's going to be much harder to have a consistent identity across spaces given that *nowhere* else uses circles. Also, JPEGs can't be circular so now you have to design something that works as both a circle and a square for whenever someone clicks your logo. How are they so in touch with what their users want?