SoundCloud went live 18 years ago as a launchpad for independent artists to share their music. Now, it s adding more tools for listeners to share what they re into.
The music streaming app, which ranks above streaming stalwarts Pandora and Apple Music in terms of monthly average users, introduced new social features on Thursday, including:
I left the UK in August 2024 to go traveling with my partner. By the time I got back, I was single and unemployed. I wasn t in a good place. To cope with the traveling blues and the breakup, I turned to bedrotting. I was lying there, scrolling Instagram and TikTok, jumping from news app to news app, opening dozens of loops but never closing any of them. I was looking for distraction and some sort of comfort, but I couldn t get it on a screen. My phone habits were making me feel worse. So I set out to better manage my relationship with my device. And it didn t work. The existing screentime apps like Opal, Brick, and Jomo are very all-or-nothing. There's no middle ground where I felt I could stay informed without getting sucked back in by social media algorithms. I still wanted to go on YouTube to see what news channels were saying about international politics, but I didn t want to get distracted by all the other recommendations that happened to be there. I still wanted to see what my friends were up to on Instagram, but I didn't want to be enticed by the reels asking me to watch just one more video. I still wanted to check my emails, but I didn t want to lose half an hour to meaningless messages. Software s stickiness made it nearly impossible for me to stay disciplined. So I set out with a new mission: to make something for myself that would allow me to stay updated without becoming easily distracted. What I envisioned was a hub that put things in an environment where I had control letting me stay on my home turf instead of cruising through internet neighborhoods filled with booby traps. That way, I could avoid the endless stream of information, the notifications, and the slot machine-like UX. I ve started building that. Siftly (https://siftly.space/) is part wellness tool, part productivity tool. It s completely customizable and designed to put people back in control of their digital experience. Ironically, my relationship to screens has improved since I started creating the app because I'm coming at it from a creator mindset instead of a consumer mindset. But if Siftly doesn t work out, even if I go on the dole, I ll be doing it without the scroll.
I think it was Robert Kiyosaki who said that straight-A students end up working for C students, and B students work for the government.
On the other hand, we often see stories of college dropouts building billion-dollar companies. But these next big thing cases are maybe 2% at most. I believe top students usually find their place in more formal paths: becoming doctors, lawyers, and similar professions.
I keep seeing the same pattern across early-stage teams:
the MVP works until it really doesn t.
For many founders, the hardest part isn t getting something online it s everything that comes after: infra that cracks under real users code that no dev wants to touch rewriting the whole stack AI-built projects no one can maintain the moment you realize your prototype isn t a product
There has always been a framework for pricing that considers: Costs Competitor pricing Typical price ranges in the country What the client or company can afford to pay (meaning their business size) Your personal brand and authority
The more people ask for my services and want to claim my time, the higher I need to set my price (not surprisingly, I then often get ghosted).
