The dire financial situation doesn’t seem to be improving for SoundCloud in 2017, and some warning signs have just arrived in the announcement that COO Marc Strigel and Finance Director Markus Harder have both left the company.

As reported by Music Business Worldwide, the pair have left the company after around five years each, although not much is known about the reasoning behind their departure. A SoundCloud representative is quoted as telling The Financial Times that “they felt it was time to move on to new adventures”, but no further detail was given on the move.

While the two executives may simply be in need of a seachange, it’s a move that won’t help to inspire any confidence in a company already shaken by a recent filing suggesting that, while SoundCloud’s revenue grew by 21.6% in 2015, its net losses were up by 30.9%.

Adding to this concerning figure was CEO Alex Ljung’s statement in a Director’s report that, while the company should be able to stay afloat until December 2017, “the risks and uncertainties may cause the company to run out of cash before that date”.

Rumours of a sale were sparked following the launch of SoundCloud’s subscription streaming service SoundCloud Go in March, and the success of that service holds with it the fate of the company. It’s believed that SoundCloud valued itself at $1bn US when it tried and failed to sell to Spotify last year, and that Google are now considering an acquisition at a mere half of that figure.

Perhaps the losses could be stemmed by cutting back on staff costs, considering that the average annual salary rose to US$95k in 2015, up a crazy 49% on the previous year, with almost 300 people on the roster.

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