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I read this article few hours earlier when crawling through the new section. It's a surprisingly interesting piece from Buzzfeed but there's a lot of bashing of

I read this article few hours earlier when crawling through the new section. It's a surprisingly interesting piece from Buzzfeed but there's a lot of bashing of the CEO, the CTO and one recently hired senior for label relations (who seem to be really odd). This is typical: SoundCloud was an iconic company, its founders worshiped and idealized. Once money runs out, people but especially former employees start to backstab, blaspheme and blame loud and clearly. Why not before? Now when everybody is hitting SoundCloud it's easy and risk-free to join the hate. All the NDAs they once signed seem to be gone? To be fired also means fire and forget for them. I never believed in SoundCloud. The founders did a great job building a huge brand and DNA out of nothing but the business model is by design broken or to put it simply, you just can't do business with music labels. Btw, where is Fred Wilson? The biggest proponent and investor of SoundCloud who didn't miss an opportunity to tell us that sound is the future stays silent and hasn't commented this tragedy once. A VC just for good times? EDIT: Why the downvotes? Mind to share your view?

cheetos 9y ago
In my experience, it's likely that the founders' problematic behavior has existed from the beginning, but employees feared retaliation and thus didn't speak up until now, when they are safe from being fired.
Yokohiii 9y ago
I cannot follow you. By no means you can openly criticize the managers of your own company. Even nowadays this could be handled as mutiny. On top of that, management is usually only half transparent at best. Causing doubt if the decisions are just bad or nobody got the whole picture.
- thinbeige 9y ago
  You are right and I was not clear. What I mean: Since they all signed NDAs they are not allowed to openly criticize their company—ever. Not when being hired and not after being fired. Since 173 were fired it's easy to ignore NDAs because they won't get caught. But it's not right, they break a significant agreement and this is so typical for employees (just head to Glassdoor and how much internal stuff is disclosed).
  - detaro 9y ago
    We don't know what kind of NDAs SC employees had to sign/how valid they are. At least some of the issues are listed as only appearing after a while. Journalists likely are a lot more receptive to/asking around for employees with complaints when there is a general air of failure (or total overblown hype) surrounding a company.
    - thinbeige 9y ago
      > We don't know what kind of NDAs SC employees had to sign/how valid they are. Every employment contract has by nature a NDA embedded. And those are much stricter than dedicated NDAs since employment contracts get rarely negotiated line by line, most employees just accept and sign employment contracts.
      - Neliquat 9y ago
        'Every contract' Not even close.
  - snom380 9y ago
    I think it's right to speak publically when called for (for instance with whisteblowers). Without people doing that, we'd actually have much less transparency in our democracy. Companies where employees actually keep secrets do so by earning the trust and respect of their employees, not by writing ironclad employee agreements. In this particular case, for these employees, I think it boils down to whether they honor their loyalty to the company vision more than their employee agreement.
  - Yokohiii 9y ago
    No offense and I am no lawyer. But I think you get something wrong about NDAs. It is useful to handle confidentiality of company information. I.e. during the process of signing contracts with music giants or even the strategy decision to do that, can apply to an NDA. But at some time this information will go public. An NDA could only apply if you later leak confidential details about contracts for example. There is also a lot of complaint about the management and it's behaviour, NDAs won't stop individuals to reveal someone has bad manners, but there is always a possibility to accuse them of slander. tl;dr obvious fact > nda > deals behind closed doors
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
snom380 9y ago
I didn't downvote, but: - Presumably the people inside the company has tried for years to pressure for a change. When that doesn't work, and especially once a big layoff happens, it's understandable that employees vent their frustration in public. And that might be what it takes for outside people (investors etc) to make necessary changes at the top. It's not about backstabbing. If these employees didn't care at all about the fate of the company, they would just take the severance package and move to other jobs without saying much. The complaining you hear is most likely from people that _care_ about SoundCloud. - You're saying that the business model is broken, because you "can't do business with music labels". YouTube is evidence that it _is_ possible, it's just tremendously difficult. You need advanced algorithms to detect copyright ownership, you need a system to do revenue sharing, you need people to handle complain cases etc etc. The reason why they failed has to do with poor strategy and execution, and less to do with the business model. (This reminds be of all the people that said Apple could never get into the cell phone business because dealing with the operators would be impossible. Or that web search was a broken business model back then Yahoo-like portals were all the rage and web search truly sucked.)
- thinbeige 9y ago
  > it's understandable that employees vent their frustration in public They still break an agreement. > YouTube is evidence that it _is_ possible, Music isn't their core. And btw the agreement between Youtube and the German GEMA took a decade.
  - snom380 9y ago
    Does the fact that it's not their core contradict what I'm saying? Youtube is still hugely popular for people to share their own recordings and remixes. I know that it took a long time for YouTube to figure out the licensing stuff. As I said, tremendously difficult, yes, but not impossible.
    - thinbeige 9y ago
      > Does the fact that it's not their core contradict what I'm saying? Yes it does. Youtube is not about music, their focus lies somewhere else, music complements their product but they are not dependent on it and besides, it's a just one rev stream compared to their main rev channels. Another example: Apple has Apple Music to strengthen the network effect of their products, not because they want to enter the music business. So, both used labels to complement their core products. Both would survive without deals to the labels. SoundCloud would not survive without those deals because then SoundCloud wouldn't have any product. > As I said, tremendously difficult, yes, but not impossible. I disagree, 10 years negotiations sounds like something impossible for a company which core solely relies on music, who wants to fund a company for 10 years with an unclear outcome?? For Youtube it was a different story: In this ten years Youtube severely damaged GEMA's reputation by displaying billion times that it's GEMA's fault that user can't listen to music. So, it's questionable if any other company with less power would have been able to strike a deal with the GEMA. Anyways, Youtube could have negotiated 100 years, they still would make revs through other channels.
manigandham 9y ago
> but there's a lot of bashing of the CEO, the CTO That's because it's the leadership's fault for the failure. > business model is by design broken or to put it simply, you just can't do business with music labels. If the business model is broken, they should pick something else. Again a leadership problem. Becoming yet another streaming service was a major error and completely preventable.

cheetos 9y ago

In my experience, it's likely that the founders' problematic behavior has existed from the beginning, but employees feared retaliation and thus didn't speak up until now, when they are safe from being fired.

Yokohiii 9y ago

I cannot follow you. By no means you can openly criticize the managers of your own company. Even nowadays this could be handled as mutiny. On top of that, management is usually only half transparent at best. Causing doubt if the decisions are just bad or nobody got the whole picture.

thinbeige 9y ago
You are right and I was not clear. What I mean: Since they all signed NDAs they are not allowed to openly criticize their company—ever. Not when being hired and not after being fired. Since 173 were fired it's easy to ignore NDAs because they won't get caught. But it's not right, they break a significant agreement and this is so typical for employees (just head to Glassdoor and how much internal stuff is disclosed).
- detaro 9y ago
  We don't know what kind of NDAs SC employees had to sign/how valid they are. At least some of the issues are listed as only appearing after a while. Journalists likely are a lot more receptive to/asking around for employees with complaints when there is a general air of failure (or total overblown hype) surrounding a company.
  - thinbeige 9y ago
    > We don't know what kind of NDAs SC employees had to sign/how valid they are. Every employment contract has by nature a NDA embedded. And those are much stricter than dedicated NDAs since employment contracts get rarely negotiated line by line, most employees just accept and sign employment contracts.
    - Neliquat 9y ago
      'Every contract' Not even close.
- snom380 9y ago
  I think it's right to speak publically when called for (for instance with whisteblowers). Without people doing that, we'd actually have much less transparency in our democracy. Companies where employees actually keep secrets do so by earning the trust and respect of their employees, not by writing ironclad employee agreements. In this particular case, for these employees, I think it boils down to whether they honor their loyalty to the company vision more than their employee agreement.
- Yokohiii 9y ago
  No offense and I am no lawyer. But I think you get something wrong about NDAs. It is useful to handle confidentiality of company information. I.e. during the process of signing contracts with music giants or even the strategy decision to do that, can apply to an NDA. But at some time this information will go public. An NDA could only apply if you later leak confidential details about contracts for example. There is also a lot of complaint about the management and it's behaviour, NDAs won't stop individuals to reveal someone has bad manners, but there is always a possibility to accuse them of slander. tl;dr obvious fact > nda > deals behind closed doors

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

snom380 9y ago

I didn't downvote, but: - Presumably the people inside the company has tried for years to pressure for a change. When that doesn't work, and especially once a big layoff happens, it's understandable that employees vent their frustration in public. And that might be what it takes for outside people (investors etc) to make necessary changes at the top. It's not about backstabbing. If these employees didn't care at all about the fate of the company, they would just take the severance package and move to other jobs without saying much. The complaining you hear is most likely from people that _care_ about SoundCloud. - You're saying that the business model is broken, because you "can't do business with music labels". YouTube is evidence that it _is_ possible, it's just tremendously difficult. You need advanced algorithms to detect copyright ownership, you need a system to do revenue sharing, you need people to handle complain cases etc etc. The reason why they failed has to do with poor strategy and execution, and less to do with the business model. (This reminds be of all the people that said Apple could never get into the cell phone business because dealing with the operators would be impossible. Or that web search was a broken business model back then Yahoo-like portals were all the rage and web search truly sucked.)

thinbeige 9y ago
> it's understandable that employees vent their frustration in public They still break an agreement. > YouTube is evidence that it _is_ possible, Music isn't their core. And btw the agreement between Youtube and the German GEMA took a decade.
- snom380 9y ago
  Does the fact that it's not their core contradict what I'm saying? Youtube is still hugely popular for people to share their own recordings and remixes. I know that it took a long time for YouTube to figure out the licensing stuff. As I said, tremendously difficult, yes, but not impossible.
  - thinbeige 9y ago
    > Does the fact that it's not their core contradict what I'm saying? Yes it does. Youtube is not about music, their focus lies somewhere else, music complements their product but they are not dependent on it and besides, it's a just one rev stream compared to their main rev channels. Another example: Apple has Apple Music to strengthen the network effect of their products, not because they want to enter the music business. So, both used labels to complement their core products. Both would survive without deals to the labels. SoundCloud would not survive without those deals because then SoundCloud wouldn't have any product. > As I said, tremendously difficult, yes, but not impossible. I disagree, 10 years negotiations sounds like something impossible for a company which core solely relies on music, who wants to fund a company for 10 years with an unclear outcome?? For Youtube it was a different story: In this ten years Youtube severely damaged GEMA's reputation by displaying billion times that it's GEMA's fault that user can't listen to music. So, it's questionable if any other company with less power would have been able to strike a deal with the GEMA. Anyways, Youtube could have negotiated 100 years, they still would make revs through other channels.

manigandham 9y ago

> but there's a lot of bashing of the CEO, the CTO That's because it's the leadership's fault for the failure. > business model is by design broken or to put it simply, you just can't do business with music labels. If the business model is broken, they should pick something else. Again a leadership problem. Becoming yet another streaming service was a major error and completely preventable.