News - 05/06/2018

SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainor says the streaming platform is "in a much clearer place now"

SoundCloud CEO Kerry Trainor says the streaming platform is "in a much clearer place now"

Good news for Soundcloud. This time last year, the platform was in hot water and - after an annual loss of $82m in 2016 - spent the summer of 2017 simply trying to survive, cutting 40% of its worldwide headcount and closing offices in London and San Francisco.

Nine months ago, then, a majority stake in SoundCloud was jointly acquired by The Raine Group and Singapore-based Temasek in a deal which saw a $170m investment pumped into the service’s pockets, while Kerry Trainor – the former boss of Vimeo – became SoundCloud’s new CEO.

Trainor recently revealed that, in calendar 2017, his Berlin-based company turned over more than $100m. As Trainor tells the latest edition of the Music Business Worldwide Podcast:

In terms of where we stand financially, we’re very happy. We re-capitalized the company [last year], the balance sheet is very strong, and we’ve been able to reduce the [cash] burn greatly; we’ve even had a couple of months of positive cashflow, all in the context of absolutely focusing on continuing to grow the platform. Our usage growth has actually accelerated over the past two quarters [Q4 2017 and Q1 2018]. It’s all part of our mission to be the first place creators come to upload and share their work with the world. And, for listeners, we want to be the first place to discover music that is truly new.

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