Last week, audio sharing service SoundCloud laid off 40% of its staff with reports indicating the free service had just 80 days of operating capital remaining. For musicians, podcasters and others who rely on the service, that has caused great consternation. But an announcement by the CEO and tweets from a musician who made their start on SoundCloud suggest a different story.
SoundCloud CEO Alex Ljung said in an announcement, “SoundCloud is not going away. Not in 50 days, not in 80 days or anytime in the foreseeable future. Your music is safe”. This followed his previous statement where he discussed laying off 173 staff and consolidating the remaining staff into two offices in Berlin and New York.
TechCrunch followed up and eventually was told by SoundCloud’s PR rep that they were funded into Q4 this year – hence the 80 days prediction.
Over the weekend, Chance the Rapper, an artist who got their start on SoundCloud, tweeted that “I’m working on the SoundCloud thing”, later saying he had been in conversation wth Ljung and that discussions were “fruitful”.
So, reading between the lines, it would seem Chance the Rapper has provided some sort of input that has resulted in a reprieve for the service.
What does all that mean? If you’re hosting and sharing music, podcasts or other content from SoundCloud, you should start thinking about a Plan B, as you should for all cloud services – especially free ones.
That means ensuring you have local copies of all your content and looking at alternative services just in case.
SoundCloud may yet survive but there are still many unknowns.
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