Four ways to save Soundcloud

What would you do to save Soundcloud? Q Division imagined what we would do and came up with a vision for social spaces where the music is always the music that people actually love.

Imagine a music festival with all of your favourite artists on the line-up. Imagine walking into a store and hearing that song you just can’t get enough of right now. Imagine going to club and DJing as you dance.

Soundcloud is struggling. The music platform recently laid off hundreds of workers, some of whom had only just finished their inductions. Soundcloud has been running tens of millions of dollar losses year after year since its launch in 2008. Legal issues and the rise of rival services now threatens its existence.

But Soundcloud possesses arguably the greatest data set on music tastes that the world has ever seen. It has more than 175 million active users per month. Its algorithm generates information on user preferences to suggest music to listeners. Soundcloud’s data alone could be sold to record labels, for whom this information would be invaluable, but there are more interesting innovations the company can pursue with this information.

Using Soundcloud’s extraordinary data set, its music curation algorithm and GPS look-ups made possible by the Soundcloud app, we can generate perfectly-tailored soundscapes using strategies for four kinds of experience: music festivals, retail outlets and public travel facilities, nightclubs, and even audience-created concerts.

Audience-Led Music Festivals

Soundcloud has information on hundreds of millions of users’ tastes. With this data, we could easily create a profile of listeners who share favourite songs, artists and genres. All we have to do is pick a venue that is central to many users who fit the profile, organise performances by artists that the profiled users, and sell tickets. Instead of attending festivals to see one or two performances, people would go to see every single act. We can create perfect lineups by letting listener preferences sculpt the line-up.

Soundcloud focuses on creators. Usually, this means artists who upload music, but listeners are creators too. They influence music through listening, liking, commenting, re-posting and sharing. So users who fit the festival audience profile will be rewarded as creators through festival discounts and exclusive packages. Some could get to meet their dream artists.

And ultimately, Soundcloud gets incredible marketing and a new revenue stream through ticket sales, advertising and sponsorship, media partnerships and more.

Listener-Driven Public Spaces

Soundcloud can transform people’s experience of daily movement. We can discover the location of anybody with a Soundcloud app downloaded on their phone through GPS look-ups. So we can create an automated system that records the presence of users in a place and then generate a playlist drawn from the music that those users listen to on Soundcloud. Instead of bland retail radio in shops or outdated music on PA systems in stations, buses, trains and the like, we can stream music that people in the shops and stations enjoy. Private companies seeking customer satisfaction to sell products like retail stores and restaurants would much rather know that consumers enjoy the music as they shop than hope that their paid-for retail radio station is bland enough not to be noticed. And this innovation will drive people to download the Soundcloud app so that they contribute to the music that they hear as they move. The same thrill of showing someone that song you really love is magnified when you have the opportunity to stand in an elevator with strangers and see them hum to your favourite tune.

Virtually every government in the world has a mandate to promote local arts and culture. And any government that seeks to promote and strengthen local musicians will want in. Governments could set up Soundcloud music systems in public places on the condition that for every song we play that someone in the building has enjoyed before, we then play a song by a local artist that our algorithm suggests those present will enjoy.

The playlist generation process would have to reduce a group of listeners in a place to a listener profile, just like festivals, so that the music follows a similar taste pattern, without radical genre changes that would throw off most listeners. We would also have to limit certain songs that are inappropriate for some contexts. All of this is possible.

Dancefloor DJs

The exact same innovation can create set lists for clubs. The world is full of terrible DJs who misread crowds and kill the turn-up through selecting a bad record. Soundcloud can intertwine clubbers’ tastes into a listener profile, and then generate a song list that is structured by tempo and energy, so that the music corresponds to the mood in clubs at different times of night. So clubbers will contribute to the function of a DJ as they party.

As with other public spaces, this heightens Soundcloud’s public profile, drives downloads and creates potential for local content and private purchase deals with restaurants, stores and governments.

The Far Out Idea

We could create concerts on demand.

We can measure a high concentration of Soundcloud users in one place who love an artist.

Imagine we strike a deal with Chance The Rapper to be available one night in Milan. Then we announce that on this night, we will monitor Soundcloud users who love Chance and, at a certain time (say 11.30pm), we find the place that the most users who love Chance The Rapper are. It could be a club, a park or a street corner. It could be someone’s house. Chance leaves at 11.30pm. At midnight, he arrives at that place, and raps.

Imagine the joy. Your efforts created a totally unique performance by your favourite artist, in a place of your choosing, for you, simply by listening to the artist and travelling somewhere.

If these events take off, artists will return to Soundcloud to ensure that their music is available for streaming so that they can be a part of the magic. Fans will use Soundcloud to push artists’ Soundcloud profiles so that they are selected for one of these events. Users will download the Soundcloud app so that their footfalls might pull musicians to the performance venue they chose.

Normal people will create unique and unforgettable moments with music.

Soundcloud will share the best music with all its creators. Artists and listeners.

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