SoundCloud: Rainy Days Ahead?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” is an apt description as any of digital music services in 2017.

SoundCloud could reportedly run out of cash before the end of 2017 without new investment.  As reported by Music Business Worldwide a new filing at Companies House reveals that the company’s revenues grew 21.6% to €21.1m ($22m) in 2015, with net losses ramping up by 30.9% to €51.22m ($52m).

In other words, despite the launch of premium service SoundCloud Go in the US, UK and Germany in 2016, the service is losing far more than it is making. There are repeated murmurings of a Google acquisition on the horizon, though The Gen recalls similar speculation about Spotify acquiring the platform, which obviously didn’t come to fruition.

SoundCloud issued a statement saying: “In 2016, we saw solid growth not only for the industry but for SoundCloud too. And we see this trend continuing throughout 2017. To date, we have successfully launched SoundCloud Go, our subscription service, and our ads business in eight markets, including the US, UK, Ireland, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Germany. We are on a very positive path to achieving our aim of enabling all creators to be paid for their work, while also building a financially sustainable platform where our connected community of creators, listeners and curators can continue to thrive”.

Nothing to see here, please move along, thank you.

The news is hardly surprising in a landscape where Spotify is yet to turn a profit there are obvious challenges to launching yet another £9.99 paid subscription service and SoundCloud have seemingly bet the farm on the success of this, The absurdity is that SoundCloud is undoubtedly one of the largest music streaming platforms, with a reported user base of 175 million listeners but this might not be enough to save it.