SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform that allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings by users.[2]
History
SoundCloud was originally started in Stockholm, Sweden but was established in Berlin, Germany in August, 2007 by sound designer Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss. It had the intention of allowing musicians to share recordings with each other but later transformed into a full publishing tool which also allowed musicians to distribute their music tracks.[3]
A few months after it began operating, SoundCloud began to challenge the dominance of MySpace as a platform for musicians to distribute their music by allowing recording artists to interact more nimbly with their fans.[3]
In a 2009 interview with Wired, co-founder Alex Ljung said:
“We both came from backgrounds connected to music, and it was just really, really annoying for us to collaborate with people on music — I mean simple collaboration, just sending tracks to other people in a private setting, getting some feedback from them, and having a conversation about that piece of music. In the same way that we’d be using Flickr for our photos, and Vimeo for our videos, we didn’t have that kind of platform for our music.”[3]
In April 2009, SoundCloud received €2.5 million Series A funding from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures.[2] By May 2010, SoundCloud announced it had one million subscribers.[2] In January 2011, it was confirmed that SoundCloud had raised a $10 million Series B funding round from Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures. On June 15, 2011, SoundCloud announced they had 5 million registered users, and investments from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary's A-Grade Fund. On January 23, 2012, SoundCloud announced on their blog that they had 10 million registered users. A story wheel was created for the occasion, which can be found on the SoundCloud blog.[4]
Features
A key feature of SoundCloud is that it lets artists upload their music with a distinctive URL. This contrasts with MySpace, which hosts music only on the MySpace site. By allowing sound files to be embedded anywhere, SoundCloud can be combined with Twitter and Facebook to let members reach their audience better.[3]
SoundCloud distributes music using widgets and apps.[2] Users can place the widget on their own websites or blogs and then SoundCloud will automatically Tweet every track uploaded.[3] SoundCloud has an API that allows other applications or smartphones to upload or download music and sound files.[3] Apps are available for the iPhone, iPad, and Android platforms and a Symbian app is also thought to be on the way.[5]
This API has been integrated into several applications, most notably the Pro version of the PreSonus Studio One DAW.[6] Several other web services integrate with the API, including Songkick and FourSquare.[7]
SoundCloud depicts audio tracks graphically as waveforms and allows users to comment on specific parts of the track (also known as timed comments).
SoundCloud also provides users with the ability to create and join groups that provide a common space for content to be collected and shared.
Paid subscription features
SoundCloud offers additional features to users with paid subscriptions. Such users are given more hosting space and may distribute their tracks or recordings to more groups and users, create sets of recordings, and more thoroughly track the statistics for each of their tracks. Additional statistic data are unlocked depending on which subscription the user has chosen, including the number of listens per track per user and the originating country of individual listens.
Recognition
SoundCloud won the Schroders Innovation Award at the 2011 European Tech Tour Awards Dinner.[8]
Similar organizations
References
External links
