|
SoundCloud, which enables people to record, upload, promote, and
share their own music and other audio files, said it would offer
its content free of advertising in the UK for a monthly
subscription fee of 9.99 pounds ($14.64) and in Ireland for 9.99
euros ($11.50).
Last year consumers spent $5 billion on music streaming
subscriptions, a rise of 70 percent from the previous year.
"Streaming is at a very early stage," Eric Wahlforss,
SoundCloud's Chief Technology Officer and co-founder told
Reuters.
"SoundCloud is not a profitable business yet. And that is very
intentional. We are investing heavily in growth and that is what
we will continue to do. We are in this for the long haul."
SoundCloud currently has 175 million users but Wahlforss said he
could not give an indication of its number of paying subscribers
as most of them were still in their free trial period.
Spotify had 30 million subscribers at the end of March, while
Apple Music had a tally of more than 10 million subscribers
early this year.
SoundCloud's Wahlforss said the company would rapidly introduce
SoundCloud Go to other countries around the world.
"We are planning to roll out to multiple territories this year.
We are looking at a couple of years to really take this to the
whole world," he said, declining to give further details about
the next countries it intends to roll out.
Financing the roll-out is not a problem, Wahlforss said.
SoundCloud earlier this year raised around $35 million in debt
financing and has an option to secure another $70 million
through a convertible bond.
"The business is well funded and we can continue executing
according to plan," Wahlforss said.
(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
|
