I don't think Twitter would buy SoundCloud for audio Tweets or podcasts.
Rather, I'd argue that SoundCloud is the #1 source of up-and-coming music on the Web today. Between play and upload information from SoundCloud and mention and trend information from Twitter, Twitter could easily become a content-discovery powerhouse. Information about the "next big thing" will always hold value for marketers, and access to the trendsetters who are consuming the "next big thing" is worth even more.
Between their folded #music attempt based on We Are Hunted and their recent acquisition of Gnip, it's obvious that Twitter are trying to expand and sell their role as a destination for information about the up-and-coming.
That's why they'd buy SoundCloud - Twitter could let marketers learn what's hot next, who's consuming it, and then allow them turn around and sell ads directly to those influencers.
Please buy Soundcloud. They have a great product that hasn't made many improvements in the last couple years. Hopefully an acquisition by Twitter would give them the resources they need to thrive, without too much negative oversight. (Vine is an example of a very successful Twitter acquisition.)
I hope that will be the case but I'm not holding my breath, they have received over $120M in funding up to this point. They had so much potential when they launched and in the last year or so they have just fell behind. When they moved over to this new look there was so much functionality lost and so many critical bugs introduced that they still haven't fixed.
Infinite scroll on their site is completely unusable, on the desktop and on the iPhone. Try to scroll past page 5 on either device and it will begin to slow to crawl, and then it will just start repeating pages of songs over and over. As you scroll, they load more and more elements until the page is using a ridiculous amount of ram. There is no playlist shuffle capability on the iPhone. The shuffle functionality on the desktop is a joke, it shuffles the current page of songs that have been pulled in via infinite scroll.
The whole site in general is very buggy. Many times I can't scroll through my list of playlists when I try to add a song to a playlist. Sometimes I'll like a song and it won't register. All these things have made it become almost unbearable to use.
So between the non-working scroll and lack of real shuffle, it is impossible for me to access any songs I have liked when I started my account. Which are the main songs I want to access. I was thinking of creating my own client on top of their API but I'm worried it will get pulled off the app store like they did with Soundflake.
Not sure I agree. I've enjoyed how intentional SoundCloud's updates have been over the last few years without trying to do too much (like every music service ever). The changes have been subtle but useful for both power-users and casual listeners.
I think their approach to discovery needs some attention, but definitely wouldn't expect Twitter to be instrumental in helping with that.
I'm biased, as I'd hate to see anything ruin what I think is one of the best music services right now.
> [SoundCloud hasn't] made many improvements in the last couple years.
What, do you think, needs improvement?
I use the application for recording and storing occasional riffs I come up with as private tracks, and to listen to new music from people I follow occasionally. As far as I've experienced, they need not make a big improvement over the site as it is now, but given that I'm not a power user, I might have missed lots of stuff.
Unfortunately Twitter haven't seemed to realise the "Facebook" way of making acquisitions — if it's a good product in it's own silo, let it stay the course and then have two silos. Twitter seems to acquire and suck products into it, often destroying it in the process (see: The Echo Nest). Vine was unique because it was dead-simple and was already integrated into the Twitter ecosystem, and required barely any modification.
I love SoundCloud, although it has deteriorated slightly in the past year (even little things, like the site going from truly fluid to having several fixed breakpoints, seem to indicators of them become more risk-adverse or "normal" — IMO). I think a change internally would cause some excitement and innovation within the company, and Twitter coming into it would not bring the right kind of change.
Berlin has a number of great smallish tech-oriented companies that have been around for a while, like Native Instruments and Ableton AG.
It's interesting, and good for SoundCloud, but I don't think Berlin has any particular need for that kind of "startup" culture, where you create some internet service and sell it.
IMO it's cooler that Berlin has a company like SoundCloud that makes money! I don't know the numbers but base don what they're charging and the number of people I see with pro accounts they've got to be making decent revenues. Much cooler than a company that makes no money and gets bought by one of the big tech companies.
"Up until about a year ago, we[twitter] used an online database called Dabble DB to track and share information about our projects internally. While we’ve since moved that project management tool in-house (...)" [In other words: we realize this was a great product, and we still killed it, because, meh profits for twitter?"]
I can't see how that would be good at all for Twitter. Spotify makes no money. All their revenues go to paying for the content and that's unlikely to change soon. Twitter would just be purchasing a really cool, really heavy anchor.
It's going to be funny when we reach the end of this social road and we're all back on myspace essentially. Customizable personalized spaces where we share music, videos, and pictures of food.
Tom Anderson is my hero. The guy lives on a new beach every week while Zuckerberg is working 24/7 to rebuild myspace.
As an individual who enjoys listening to music on SoundCloud, this acquisition would be great!
SoundCloud is an amazing platform for music discovery and streaming. I tried Spotify for a while but I returned to SoundCloud. SoundCloud seems to get “out of the way”. I always find better music you would never hear in regulated mainstream music. There are a lot of talented artists who truly enjoy making good music on the platform that probably deserve to be in the Charts but they cannot afford to get record label deals.
With Twitter behind them, this could mean artists have a chance to get their work discovered faster. I hope this acquisition becomes a reality.
As it so happens I've just launched a service built on top of SoundCloud. voliyo.com (non-mobile for now) aims to help musicians and photographers expose their content to a larger audience, and on the flip side, allows you to find new music whilst sitting back and enjoying a photo slide show!
If any photographers/musicians are interested in trying out the private beta, PM me and I'll happily dish out the invite links :)
Strategically beneficial for both in my opinion. Soundcloud could really use some help in terms of product design in my opinion. UI/UX could be a lot better. Maybe twitter team could help move that along
Interesting. I'd be assuming it's for making audio tweets, but even then it's kind of restricting. Putting voice in front of other people is something people might not still be ready for.
With text/tweets, you can process the text and what it is about at a glance. With video, you have thumbnails and they usually give you a good idea what to expect from that video. With audio, there's nothing. I think people are not ready for that, because audio only is so hard to filter and "consume" without having to listen to it.
I think this could be an interesting move for Twitter. Especially for podcasting, since Twitter started out as Odeo, and pivoted due to lackluster interest in the medium.
i don't think it's podcasting anymore, but making the tweets really small like 1 minute or 50 seconds might be making people more interested in speaking infront of an audience, but if it's online music streaming they could choose rdio instead of soundcloud.
[+] [-] bri3d|11 years ago|reply
Rather, I'd argue that SoundCloud is the #1 source of up-and-coming music on the Web today. Between play and upload information from SoundCloud and mention and trend information from Twitter, Twitter could easily become a content-discovery powerhouse. Information about the "next big thing" will always hold value for marketers, and access to the trendsetters who are consuming the "next big thing" is worth even more.
Between their folded #music attempt based on We Are Hunted and their recent acquisition of Gnip, it's obvious that Twitter are trying to expand and sell their role as a destination for information about the up-and-coming.
That's why they'd buy SoundCloud - Twitter could let marketers learn what's hot next, who's consuming it, and then allow them turn around and sell ads directly to those influencers.
[+] [-] sb23|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamnemecek|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squints|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cloudwalking|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dntrkv|11 years ago|reply
Infinite scroll on their site is completely unusable, on the desktop and on the iPhone. Try to scroll past page 5 on either device and it will begin to slow to crawl, and then it will just start repeating pages of songs over and over. As you scroll, they load more and more elements until the page is using a ridiculous amount of ram. There is no playlist shuffle capability on the iPhone. The shuffle functionality on the desktop is a joke, it shuffles the current page of songs that have been pulled in via infinite scroll.
The whole site in general is very buggy. Many times I can't scroll through my list of playlists when I try to add a song to a playlist. Sometimes I'll like a song and it won't register. All these things have made it become almost unbearable to use.
So between the non-working scroll and lack of real shuffle, it is impossible for me to access any songs I have liked when I started my account. Which are the main songs I want to access. I was thinking of creating my own client on top of their API but I'm worried it will get pulled off the app store like they did with Soundflake.
[+] [-] dshanahan|11 years ago|reply
I think their approach to discovery needs some attention, but definitely wouldn't expect Twitter to be instrumental in helping with that.
I'm biased, as I'd hate to see anything ruin what I think is one of the best music services right now.
[+] [-] gkya|11 years ago|reply
What, do you think, needs improvement?
I use the application for recording and storing occasional riffs I come up with as private tracks, and to listen to new music from people I follow occasionally. As far as I've experienced, they need not make a big improvement over the site as it is now, but given that I'm not a power user, I might have missed lots of stuff.
[+] [-] grrowl|11 years ago|reply
I love SoundCloud, although it has deteriorated slightly in the past year (even little things, like the site going from truly fluid to having several fixed breakpoints, seem to indicators of them become more risk-adverse or "normal" — IMO). I think a change internally would cause some excitement and innovation within the company, and Twitter coming into it would not bring the right kind of change.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] brianbreslin|11 years ago|reply
was vine an acquisition or an internal dev project?
[+] [-] felixbraun|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/25/soundcloud-raises-60-millio...
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wellboy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TillE|11 years ago|reply
It's interesting, and good for SoundCloud, but I don't think Berlin has any particular need for that kind of "startup" culture, where you create some internet service and sell it.
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e12e|11 years ago|reply
I don't recognize that many from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
Except for Dabble DB (Smallthought Systems) and Posterous:
http://blog.dabbledb.com/2010/06/140character-dabbling.html
http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/30/4281780/posterous-is-shutt...
I hadn't realize how extra-cruel the dabbledb thing was until I read this:
https://blog.twitter.com/2010/more-dabbling
"Up until about a year ago, we[twitter] used an online database called Dabble DB to track and share information about our projects internally. While we’ve since moved that project management tool in-house (...)" [In other words: we realize this was a great product, and we still killed it, because, meh profits for twitter?"]
For those that didn't know what DabbleDB was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY
So, while an acquisition might be great for the owners of soundcloud, I'm rather terrified as a user...
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|11 years ago|reply
* Summize -> search.twitter.com
* Tweetie -> Twitter for iPhone
* TweetDeck
* Vine
* Crashlytics
* MoPub
* Gnip
[+] [-] mongol|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] felixbraun|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuaxo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianstallings|11 years ago|reply
Tom Anderson is my hero. The guy lives on a new beach every week while Zuckerberg is working 24/7 to rebuild myspace.
[+] [-] computerjunkie|11 years ago|reply
SoundCloud is an amazing platform for music discovery and streaming. I tried Spotify for a while but I returned to SoundCloud. SoundCloud seems to get “out of the way”. I always find better music you would never hear in regulated mainstream music. There are a lot of talented artists who truly enjoy making good music on the platform that probably deserve to be in the Charts but they cannot afford to get record label deals.
With Twitter behind them, this could mean artists have a chance to get their work discovered faster. I hope this acquisition becomes a reality.
[+] [-] tom3k|11 years ago|reply
If any photographers/musicians are interested in trying out the private beta, PM me and I'll happily dish out the invite links :)
[+] [-] pothibo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hardoncollider|11 years ago|reply
Vine is nothing without a distribution method, so that kind of acquisition makes sense.
If Facebook turns to Shitbook, I really don't want SoundCloud impacted, because they're unassociated and can thrive independently.
[+] [-] squints|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mayeesha|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ntaso|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larakerns|11 years ago|reply
Soundcloud songs overlaid on Vine vids, etc. could prove amazing as well.
[+] [-] pgtruesdell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Touche|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glomph|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schwap|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mayeesha|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|11 years ago|reply