There was a rather large round of layoffs at Soundcloud recently that left 40% of their staff jobless. According to this TechCrunch piece it was a real shitshow, with very little warning from management. There's speculation that the company has funding to last until Q4 of 2017 but maybe not much beyond that. The founders are doing damage control assuring everyone that Soundcloud isn't going anywhere but it does beg the question - what if it did?

I think most people use Soundcloud as a sampling tool. You encounter a song or an embed here and there to introduce yourself to an artist, eventually leading you back to a music streaming platform to hear the whole thing. But there's an enormous world of remixes, DJ sets, podcasts and interesting compositions on there. Personally, I have hours of Liked content that runs a wide gamut of styles and I'd hate to see that go away. If you've not given it a chance, it honestly is a great platform for music discovery.

That being said, they're doubling down on their Go+ subscription offering but I know exactly zero people that partake in it, myself included. I'm not clear on what the solution is there to make it more appealing but it's worth noting that it's part of the struggle.

From the creator perspective, services like DistroKid make it extremely easy (and cheap) to get your music on all of the streaming platforms nearly instantly and you actually get royalty payments. Maybe they are tiny but at least it's money coming in. I have almost every album from the yk Records catalog up on Soundcloud and I've never seen a dime. The flip side to that is that full concerts and bizarre remixes pop up from time to time, giving me fuel for the promotional fire that I would never have otherwise.

I don't have the magic bullet for how Soundcloud can solve their woes but I've heard they have been in trouble for some time. This round of firing just confirms those rumors, even if they do end up sticking around for many years. I find their place in the music landscape a fascinating one and I'm all for waxing on speculation of what's next for them.

I've been keeping the debut EP from Sun Seeker in my heavy rotation lately. Biddeford is just six tracks but the brevity allows it to stay engaging from start to finish, no lulls. It hits that sweet spot of sunny disposition on the surface that's cut with a melancholy underneath. The production from Nashville's Buddy Hughen (aka Sharp Neck) is the perfect match for the 60's vibe and subtle layered instrumentation throughout.

You can hear it all on Spotify (or whatever streaming service you prefer) and get the physical version from Third Man Records.

music that inspires Ellison

Rural New York artist Scott Daniel Ellison has a penchant for spinning a folk art flair into his menagerie of characters - often familiar haunting monsters that emerge from the dark. His 2016 show Witch Hazel show features the likes of Man Bat, Werewolf and Crow Dance to name but a few. They often feel like cave paintings, captured the morning after a chance encounter with the various beasts.

You can see more of his recent work (don't miss Melting Man) over on Instagram at @scottdanielellison.

Fascinating

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TIL a whole lot about Vocaloids.

Put yourself in the position of someone learning how to use an API for the first time and you will realize everyone's API docs are awful.

I admit I'm intrigued

"I sell books." versus "I sell whatever the fuck I want." $AMZN https://t.co/j0TTnE7wFc

A little taste of what's to come later tonight. If you can't make it to the show, head to my Facebook around 9:15 P… https://t.co/DsHJAIKU1A

My mom is extremely good at Facebook https://t.co/7hzNuPFIx6

The most painful gif you'll see today. https://t.co/wnPZuyRkvg

I'll only watch Ready Player One if it's faithful to the novel, with unedited playthroughs of Wargames, Zork, and a perfect game of Pac-Man.

https://t.co/KOWhuJqeqT

I miss Vine

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Been doing a little traveling this week; I'm back in NY for the wedding of Charlie Tran. I really just wanted to link that domain and his name so, maybe, in some small way, I can sway search results to couple them together forever. Just like a marriage. If you ever find yourself needing to do some test HTML, just make sure the name Charlie Tran is linked to that URL. He'll love it. Trust me.

Let me know if I missed any madness this week.

• Sleep Good - Somewhere - of course I want you rewatch this video. See here for details.
• NIN - Less Than - new song from a new EP featuring a lot of perfectly glitched out effects and gameplay from Llamasoft. Superb.
• Arlen 1945 - if you watch Twin Peaks, this will be funny. If you do not, this will be incredibly weird. Either way, enjoyable.
• Twin Peaks Coffee Commercials - I've been going down some YouTube rabbit holes around David Lynch lately and revisited this series of Georgia Coffee commercials featuring tons of cast from the original series. It's shameless but worth a watch.
• Welles - Life Like Mine - this guy just moved to Nashville from Arkansas. Two completely unlikely places to see a video this acid-trippy. It's like Hunter S Thompson made a Druggy Beatles song and I am into it.
• Vlogging Like Vloggers Who COPY Casey Neistat - getting familiar with the offerings of Ian Kung, entertained so far.
• Tokyo Gifathon - 2 minutes of amusing gif'ing as video.

Need more? Here's an amazing hat dance (seriously) and some Twin Peaks Missing Pieces that, to me, tie together the first two seasons with Season 3 quite nicely. Somehow I'd never seen those before.

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awesome