This is Recode Media with Peter Kafka. That is me. I am part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm recording this in New York City at Vox Media headquarters. I'm going to bring you back in time to a few weeks ago to a conversation I had at Recode Media with Carrie Trainer, the CEO SoundCloud. Before we get there, one brief note. We would love it if you would rate and review us on Apple podcast or rate and review us anywhere you listen to us on. You know how to do that. You can even tell people about this show on Twitter, Facebook. It's great when you tell me directly like you guys did with the Lauren Dukas show. You love that. I love hearing about it. It's even better when you tell someone else. You guys understand why you're smart. You listen to this show.

Okay, so Kerry Traynor, this is the, I think the first time Kerry has talked publicly since he took over SoundCloud.

This is a big, important media platform.

You guys may be listening to this podcast on SoundCloud right now.

SoundCloud was a company people who were very, very optimistic about for a few years, ran into money troubles, basically sort of had to sort of reboot the entire company last summer, laid off a bunch of people. Kerry is now taking it over. And this is the first time he's really explaining his plan to turn around fix, say if you pick your verb, the company and how he's going to go about doing that. It's a good conversation. Kerry is an insightful guy and he's got a big job ahead of him, so let's listen to him talk about it right now. A little jet lag? Because you're commuting from Berlin. That's your new gig. Back and forth from Germany. Yeah, I took the plunge and I'm going to be living there for at least another, I think, probably like six months, really enjoying it.

So you started working, you started running SoundCloud last summer. Yeah.

Streaming music is a graveyard. Money goes in, profits never come out. Everyone who works in digital music says I'll never go back again right you're a grown up yes and I used

to work in digital music so you know better than this why did you take this job well I mean I guess maybe I

do but look to me it was a no-brainer I mean SoundCloud to me is absolutely one of a kind and you know

when I was thinking about what I wanted to do next and working with

some investors, like, to me, this one just leapt out. And it's because, look, SoundCloud is a very

vital, an interesting streaming service, and that's the side of the business that we're absolutely

going to continue. And we think it's a very different product of what the mass streaming

services are offering. However, it does have a lot of the same near-term challenges around, like,

the margins of that business. However, SoundCloud is totally different, and it is built from the

creators out. And the very core of SoundCloud is actually a platform that creators use, a set of

tools that creators use, and that is a fantastic business. And that's where we absolutely lead in the

space. We are the largest online community of audio creators. And when we look at the ability to

invest in the platform and really drive forward on those creator tools

while also growing this very unique catalog of content that listeners love, you know,

from an investment perspective, we're really excited about it.

So I'm confused because SoundCloud started off as a free service, then it had a freemium

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