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Music

SoundCloud Lays Off Nearly Half Its Staff

“We need to ensure our path to long-term, independent success,” stated co-founder and CEO Alex Ljung on the website.
SoundCloud's Berlin office, via the Soundcloud website.

Digital music-streaming platform SoundCloud has laid off 40 percent of its employees, company co-founder and CEO Alex Ljung announced today in a blog post to the website. The company is also closing its offices in San Francisco and London, and remaining staff will be consolidated into its Berlin and New York locations.

In the note, Ljung wrote that despite the company "more than [doubling]" its revenue in the last 12 months, it needed to ensure its path to "long-term independent success." Ljung went on to explain that this will require cost cutting and continued growth of their existing advertising and subscription revenue streams.

Over the past six months, SoundCloud has introduced multiple new updates, including a mid-price tier for their SoundCloud Go subscription service and a music-recommendation feature called The Upload. In March, the company also announced an expansion of its invite-only revenue-sharing program that would allow DJs and producers to monetize their mixes and remixes.

THUMP has reached out to SoundCloud for comment.