Soundcloud looses $44 milion

"The future of Soundcloud is at risk as it reports a $44m loss"


http://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/02/12/future-soundcloud-risk-it-reports-44m-loss

Doesn't seam like a great place to invest in to me.
updated by @michael: 05/15/16 07:17:02PM

So, does this mean that Jamroom will be looking into a different audio embed platform? Or too early to even think about?

Soundcloud going under would be a very significant loss for us musician based sites. I'm envisioning losing all those hundreds of comments and ratings and discussions that currently revolve around SC clips embedded into my site via Combined Audio.


--
...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Don't think it will go under, they will ask for more investment, some investors will think its a good idea and they will get the money they need.

I posted it because its quite related to us.

When I read it it seamed to outline yet another service on the internet that is free because someone else is paying for it.

Investors put money into soundcloud so that they can grow and become a leading player in the space. The reason they can grow is because they can offer for free what someone needs to pay for.

So in our space when we think about running a site that makes money or is at least stable we think "money coming in needs to be less than money going out" but the big guy setup sooooo differently.

Amazon, soundcloud, youtube many others are all "give it away for free until we're big, then figure out if there's a way to make money".

Thought it was interesting in a "how do I make my community stable" kind of perspective.

There is a philosophy with these kinds of companies, grow big and fast, build your community and worry about money later.

I agree, someone will come in and either buy the service or invest more money.

I follow a lot of finance stuff on Twitter and there is a real problem with valuations right now. Companies are being valued at ever increasing amounts with no real revenue to show for it... that's a problem in my mind. You can run a business without making money. In this day and age, a business can't expect that because they have 200 million users that those users will translate into profits. Users nowadays will just move to another platform.

One of the reasons I was asking for an advertising module so long ago. Making money through subscriptions is hard. Selling digital downloads is hard. Advertising is pretty easy if you have a niche site with a marginal audience. Also, having the ability to offer the users a membership where they don't see ads is a great way to get them to pay for a membership.

What I'd like to see is jamroom communities taking control of niche concepts then having a viable advertising network module to turn on to monetize the system.

Do you mean an external advertising network? I personally like the ability to have advertisers contact me and advertise. I've had some problems with networks in the past - like the network not checking who is advertising on their network. When that happens, I get flagged as having a banner which links to bad stuff.

On my other sites having a self-serving ads has worked. I check out and approve the ads before they go live on the site.

yeah, but you know how, so you can.

For someone who has decided to build "a community around the motorcycle Honda nc700 for people who own and like the nc700" they have a niche community, they have interested users, they're paying $x every month for server costs and they have a "Donate" button because they don't have any other ideas about how to cover the hosting costs.

nice to have a simple option for them. (whatever that option may be)

eg: (nc700-forum.com) The common practice is a forum, but jamroom is better than a forum for a community.

I agree the more options the better.

But here is the issue I've run into when dealing with advertising networks. They want me to use their code on my site. That's a big no-no for me. I'm not running someone else's javascript on my site. I'll run Google's but that's about it.

If you guys at JR decided to develop a ad network, that would be different, I trust you guys.

Creating an ad module that displays code can be a one size fits all. You could have the options of a self service system and the option of create a zone and adding any code. Most likely an ad network is going to just give you code anyway. Once the niche catches on, niche advertisers will contact JR owners asking to display an ad. Having the option available will bring higher profits vs. directing them to a network which pays pennies on the dollar.

I started working on an ad module, but it's far from complete.

https://www.mixcloud.com/