A team of programmers is archiving SoundCloud’s entire music library
SoundCloud remains the talk of the Tech world amidst continued worries over low company morale and speculation that the Berlin-based company had only enough revenue to sustain themselves until the beginning of the next earning quarter. What started with an announcement earlier this month that the audio streaming service was laying off 40 percent of its staff has snowballed into a flurry of rumors over the future of the platform.
Chance The Rapper, perhaps the SoundCloud poster child for success as an independent artist, even took to Twitter vowing to help keep the streaming service alive.
I'm working on the SoundCloud thing
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) July 13, 2017
Just had a very fruitful call with Alex Ljung. @SoundCloud is here to stay.
— Chance The Rapper (@chancetherapper) July 14, 2017
While public details of Soundcloud’s supposed financial health have since been said to have been reported with “extensive inaccuracies,” the folks at The Archive Team, a volunteer group of approximately 150 programmers “dedicated to saving our digital heritage,” aren’t taking any chances.
Most recently, Archive Team leader Jason Scott tweeted that his non-profit group would soon begin the large-scale undertaking of backing up SoundCloud’s entire music library, which is estimated to contain one petabyte (or one million gigabytes) of data. Scott reported to Motherboard the estimated cost of such a project would lay somewhere “between $1.5 million and $2 million to store all the files for the foreseeable future.”
Archive Team plans large scale backing up of Soundcloud soon, but seriously, please donate money to the Archive. https://t.co/0Oz1IFVWWD
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) July 14, 2017
So, a heads up this fine morning: I know people want @internetarchive to mirror Soundcloud. It's a petabyte of music, people.
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) July 13, 2017
Had a quick chat with @brewster_kahle about the Soundcloud thing. To host a Petabyte of data for forseable future would be ~ $1.5/2mil.
— Jason Scott (@textfiles) July 13, 2017
All the uncertainly ensues despite Soundcloud CEO Alexander Ljung’s official statement that the platform is not going anywhere:
“There’s an insane amount of noise about SoundCloud in the world right now. And it’s just that, noise. The music you love on SoundCloud isn’t going away, the music you shared or uploaded isn’t going away, because SoundCloud is not going away. Not in 50 days, not in 80 days or anytime in the foreseeable future. Your music is safe.”
Sources: NoisePorn, Vice, Variety
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