Last August, SoundCloud cut its workforce by 20 percent, citing “the challenging economic climate” for the layoffs. That’s been a common refrain among companies reducing staff in recent years — with companies like Google, Meta, Amazon and more framing layoffs as restructuring or cost cutting measures. Now, SoundCloud says it will be cutting staff by an additional 8 percent, telling staff that the reduction is a “challenging but essential decision to ensure the health of our business and get SoundCloud to profitability this year.”
That goal was baked into the company’s last round of layoffs too, with the 2022 cuts being positioned as putting SoundCloud on “a path to sustained profitability.” This new “headcount reduction” seems to be the next step in that plan, with sources telling Billboard that the company hopes to be profitable by Q4. SoundCloud leadership has also reportedly said that it’s courting new investors.
Although SoundCloud’s layoffs follow the same gruesome pattern we’ve seen across different tech brands recently, the company has actually been slowly reducing staff for some time. In addition to last year’s cuts, the company slashed its workforce by 40 percent back in 2017.
Check out Engadget’s look at the biggest tech layoffs of 2023 for more details.