The recent past has been full of blemishes for Soundcloud: The platform lost $50 million by launching a subscription service, it laid off a bunch of employees and shut down offices, and most recently, there were rumors that the company only had enough money to keep the lights on for another couple months.
Competing service Audiomack thinks the downfall happened because Soundcloud stopped putting artists first, but in just the past few days, the platform’s fortunes have changed. Chance The Rapper has apparently saved Soundcloud, and now the site is marking its return to form with a documentary series called Next Wave.
#NextWave. Coming soon 🌊 pic.twitter.com/jUfFblniiY
— SoundCloud (@SoundCloud) July 17, 2017
The video posted on Twitter is a bit vague and makes Next Wave look like some sort of touring music festival or another type of live show, but the video’s Youtube description is more informative about what Next Wave actually is: a six-part documentary series about growing music scenes that use Soundcloud to their advantage:
“Coming soon. SoundCloud’s Next Wave documentary series journeys across six global cities in six months to explore communities of emerging scenes that are embracing the service to connect, collaborate and create a new musical landscape.”
It looks like either the first episode or all six will be released on July 20, and they’ll cover musical communities in Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, New York City, London, and Berlin. Who knows if this will be enough to get Soundcloud to a stable place, but the series at least seems to refute Audiomack’s scathing claims.
Watch the Next Wave teaser video above.
