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Business News Digital
Private equity backers could buy SoundCloud some extra time
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 31 July 2017
Bad news if you’d put a SoundCloud wake in your diary for October. According to Bloomberg, two private equity outfits are close to pumping a chunk of change into the flagging digital music company, assuring its survival for the near future at least.
While the long-term future of SoundCloud has been far from assured for sometime now – as it tries to pivot its business away from primarily selling services to content creators and into the crowded marketplace of subscription streaming – the doom and gloom really set in after the company made 40% of its staff redundant. Talk of only having funding in place to take the firm into quarter four this year added to the predictions that SoundCloud could soon fold, but for a fire-sale acquisition by another major player in digital music.
However, SoundCloud has insisted throughout that it had a long-term future as an independent company. And if the two deals rumoured by Bloomberg do come through, then its near-term future is probably assured. Though, in the expensive business of streaming, long-term futures are rarely assured.
It’s thought the two private equity backers will buy into the SoundCloud company through separate deals, and will control more than half of the firm’s shares between them.