​SoundCloud lays off 40 per cent of staff and ditches plans for acquisition

Music streaming platform SoundCloud has closed down its London office and fired 173 employees, nearly 40 per cent of the company’s staff, concentrating its efforts at offices in Berlin and New York City.

The workforce purge comes as SoundCloud’s COO Marc Strigel, finance director Markus Harder and CCO Stephen Bryan all left the company in recent months. Plus acquisition rumours have been reported with companies like Apple and Deezer looking to make bids.

Now SoundCloud’s co-founder and CEO Alex Ljung has made a statement outlining why the recent moves have been made while also expressing a commitment to remain an independent company.

In the statement, which was posted to SoundCloud’s blog, Ljung shared that the company has grown in recent years, but it needs to be focused on the future: “We need to ensure our path to long-term, independent success. And in order to do this, it 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.”

Last year, SoundCloud announced that it secured $70 million in funding to be used to "enable SoundCloud to strategically grow our technology and personnel resources to fuel our expected 2.5 times year-over-year growth in 2017." This came on the eve of launching its SoundCloud Go subscription streaming service

Read Ljung's full statement here

[Via: Billboard]