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MUSIC

SoundCloud lays off almost half of staff, but keeps Berlin HQ

Streaming platform SoundCloud, which has become a favorite tool of artists but has struggled to find ways to make money, said Thursday it would lay off nearly half its staff.

Published: 7 July 2017 09:09 CEST
SoundCloud lays off almost half of staff, but keeps Berlin HQ
Photo: DPA

The company said it would eliminate 173 of its 420 positions, closing its offices in London and San Francisco. SoundCloud is based in Berlin and will maintain a second office in New York.

Founded in 2008, SoundCloud lets users upload music files easily, making it a go-to site both for stars who decide to share tracks for free and emerging artists looking for hassle-free promotion.

SoundCloud has signed deals with major labels but has struggled to monetize its model. Talks failed both with Twitter and streaming leader Spotify to acquire and incorporate the site.

Co-founder and CEO Alex Ljung said SoundCloud had more than doubled its revenue in the past year but needed to take “tough decisions” to ensure its long-term health as an independent site.

The company's future path “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,” he wrote in a blog post.

“By reducing our costs and continuing our revenue growth, we're on our path to profitability and in control of SoundCloud's independent future,” he wrote.

Streaming, which allows listeners to choose music on-demand online, has been growing rapidly and has led to two years of healthy growth globally for the recorded music industry after decades of decline or stagnation.

But streaming companies themselves are still fine-tuning their business models. Spotify, despite a fast-growing subscriber base, has held off on a long-rumored public offering.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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