Soundcloud Culls 40% Of Staff
The free audio streaming company announced today on its blog that 173 employees will be let go.
The lay-offs follows the company’s move in March to secure $70 million in debt funding from investors.
A blog post by CEO Alex Lyung says that “by reducing our costs and continuing our revenue growth, we’re on our path to profitability and in control of SoundCloud’s independent future.”
Often cited as the ‘Youtube of the music streaming world’, SoundCloud has remained a popular destination for both musicians and listeners with 175 million users.
However, the company has struggled to keep pace with the paid subscriber counts of rivals like Spotify and Apple Music.
“In the competitive world of music streaming, we’ve spent the last several years growing our business, and more than doubled our revenue in the last 12 months alone. However, we need to ensure our path to long-term, independent success. And in order to do this, it requires cost cutting, continued growth of our existing advertising and subscription revenue streams, and a relentless focus on our unique competitive advantage — artists and creators,” Lyung said.
“With more focus and a need to think about the long term, comes tough decisions. Today, after careful and painful consideration, we took the difficult step to let go of 173 SoundCloud staffers and consolidated the team into two offices: Berlin and New York.”
“We are extremely grateful for the contributions of each and every staff member who will be leaving SoundCloud, and we wish all of them the best. Without them, we would not be where we are today.”