The people’s champ of music streaming services, Soundcloud has never been the powerhouses that Spotify or Apple Music are. However, it would be bad all around if the streaming platform were to fold, which seems feasible with Music Business Worldwide reporting a €52 million loss (that’s $54 million USD) in 2016.
The company isn’t stagnating, but rising costs of paying royalties and keeping up with a growing user base have severely outpaced SoundCloud’s revenues. SoundCloud co-founder Alex Ljung wrote in a Director’s report, “the directors believe that the Group will have sufficient funds to continue to meet its liabilities through 31 December 2017, the risks and uncertainties may cause the company to run out of cash earlier than that date.” Yikes.
In an effort to bring in more money, SoundCloud launched an ad-free subscription service midway through 2016 called SoundCloud Go. It costs $9.99 per month, but there have been no reports either way about the success of that service. This news explains the significant drop in the company’s asking price for an acquisition from the initial $1 billion to only $500 million. At this point, the rumored Google acquisition would probably be a godsend.
Does anyone use SoundCloud Go? Let us know in the comments.