Twitter decides against buying SoundCloud, report says

Twitter has backed out of negotiations to acquire streaming audio startup SoundCloud, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Rumors that Twitter was interested in buying SoundCloud first cropped up yesterday, although many people wondered exactly why the company would want to do so considering its poor luck in expanding into music.

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SoundCloud is a self-proclaimed YouTube for streaming audio content and has evolved to become an important backbone for independent and unsigned music artists. It’s also proven useful for others, such as journalists who use it to upload interview recordings and annotate them for later reference.

As for the reported deal going “poof,” Twitter apparently said that “the numbers didn’t add up,” according to WSJ‘s source. It’s hard to determine if this is a reference to the amount under negotiation for SoundCloud or if the service’s user activity, growth, or other metrics didn’t measure up in a way that Twitter was hoping to take advantage of.

SoundCloud recently raised a $60 million funding round at a $700 million estimated valuation. The service has over 250 million users, which is comparable to Twitter’s total base of active tweeters.

We also don’t know who initiated the acquisition talks, making it unclear if SoundCloud is still up for sale. The German-based startup declined to comment about the deal to VentureBeat.