SoundCloud may finally be gearing up to make some serious money. SoundCloud is one of those rare European online startups that is cornering its market: if you want to embed or share pure audio, whether it be music or podcasts, you’ll probably use this service. But that said, even if SoundCloud is the great hope of the Berlin scene, its ability to turn a decent profit has remained questionable. A couple of moves revealed at SXSW on Monday may change that. The first is a drastic simplification and improvement of SoundCloud’s paid-for premium tiers -– the company’s primary source of income – while the second is the introduction of a so-called Pro Partners tier for brands. The Pro Partners tier is not only a serious potential revenue source, but it also introduces a visual element to the site that is likely to trickle down to ordinary consumer accounts in time.
Freemium boost Let’s look at the simplified freemium model first (bearing in mind that free membership allows two hours of uploaded audio). Paving the way for ads? Forget Twitter, SoundCloud Is Social Music's Rising Star. 2012 was a very good year for SoundCloud. The social music and audio-hosting platform saw a massive uptick in user activity, according to data released by music analytics firm Next Big Sound. The State of Online Music report contains some big, but not altogether unexpected numbers: More people are listening to music online and artists saw more activity on Twitter and Facebook than they did in 2011. Across a variety of online sources, the Play button was clicked more than 93 billion times, a 45% increase over 2011.
Pretty impressive, to be sure, but not a total shocker. Triple Play Perhaps the most striking chart contained in Next Big Sound's interactive report is the one showing how SoundCloud's user activity tripling over the course of 2012. What gives? SoundCloud's redesign may have been the company's biggest project of 2012, but it didn't eat up all of the team's time.
YouTube Still Rules YouTube itself was another enormous source of online music last year. The Independent Alternative. SoundCloud launches completely rewritten Web app in private beta. SoundCloud unveiled the next version of its service at a press event in San Francisco Wednesday, which was launched in private beta at the event. The relaunch aims to put a bigger emphasis on social sharing, including social notifications.
SoundCloud also revamped search and discoverability. SoundCloud CEO Alexander Ljung demonstrated real-time notifications by recording a sound via the company’s iPhone app, only to have it immediately show up in the site. SoundCloud CTO Eric Wahlforss explained that all activity is indexed in real time, making it searchable right away. “This is a complete rewrite of our Web app,” he said, adding that it will enable the company to launch a number of additional features in the near future. Ljung explained that the company released the new version early in private beta to get SoundCloud’s users involved in the development.
SoundCloud has been quickly growing in recent months to the size of 15 million users. SoundCloud Goes HTML5, Makes Non-Flash Audio Player Its Default. SoundCloud, the up-and-coming social audio publishing platform, is endorsing HTML5’s role in the future of the Web. Today, the Berlin-based startup is officially rolling out its HTML5 audio player as the service’s default, knocking the original, Flash-based player from that esteemed position. The new player first went into beta in November, giving those curious enough an opportunity to experiment with it. Now that the bugs have been ironed out and a few new features added, the widget is ready for prime time. Indeed, the service has been growing rapidly. Just this week, it surpassed 10 million registered users, a milestone that came just weeks after receiving a reported $50 million round of funding. A big part of that growth, cofounder Alex Liung told us, is the company’s mobile strategy.
It has highly functional native apps for iOS and Android, but the browser-based Web is another story. It’s not just cross-device compatibility that makes ditching Flash a good idea. SoundCloud Reaches 10 Million Registered Users. Soundcloud turns Instagram pics into retro slide shows. On Monday Soundcloud released Storywheel.cc, which allows users to create narrated, retro-looking slide shows with their Instagram pictures. Alexander Ljung, the co-founder and CEO of the Berlin-based startup, said the company is releasing the mashup of the two services to celebrate an important milestone: Soundcloud now has ten million registered users.
Ljung and his co-founder, Eric Wahlforss, recorded a first Story Wheel about how the company got to this point, which you can see here. Storywheel.cc allows Instagram users to import their favorite photos and then simply record an audio narrative via Flash in their browser while clicking through their slides. The mashup is the newest product out of Soundcloud Labs, and it was produced by two Soundcloud employees at a hackathon last year. Ljung told me via telephone that the company may add support for other image hosters down the line. Soundcloud also just passed another milestone. SoundCloud raises $50 million round led by Kleiner Perkins. SoundCloud Launches a Sleek, Super-Functional iPad App. The social audio sharing site SoundCloud upgraded its iOS app today, adding a tablet-friendly UI for iPad users. The app lets users find and listen to tracks, comment on waveforms, connect with others and record audio using the iPad’s microphone.
Most of the functionality from the service’s Web app is here. If you’ve seen the SoundCloud Mac App for the desktop, this is a very similar experience. The iPhone version of SoundCloud has always worked on the iPad, but it never came close to having a UI this nice. With this update, more of the functionality of SoundCloud is unleashed and the interface takes far better advantage of the tablet screen real estate. The app can be used to actively discover and listen to music and audio clips in short bursts or can provide more of a “lean back” experience for sound, functioning as a sort of digital mix tape to listen to in the background. In addition to posting audio clips, users can interact with others by commenting on individual sound files.
SoundCloud. SoundCloud is a Swedish online audio distribution platform based in Berlin, Germany, that enables its users to upload, record, promote, and share their originally-created sounds. According to the company’s data, in December 2014, the service attracts more than 175 million unique monthly listeners, while content creators upload about 12 hours worth of audio every minute.[2] Founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss are the chief executive officer (CEO) and chief technical officer (CTO), respectively.
History[edit] SoundCloud was originally founded in Stockholm, Sweden, but was established in Berlin in August 2007 by Swedish sound designer Ljung and Swedish artist Wahlforss. The founders initially aspired to allow musicians to share recordings with each other, but the concept later transformed into a full publishing tool that also allowed musicians to distribute their music tracks.[3] At the start of December 2012, the new SoundCloud version was released to the general public. Apps[edit] SoundCloud Helps you Share & Discover New, Free Music.
Soundcloud teams up with Hype Machine. [Berlin] In a savvy move, SoundCloud are to partner with music portal The Hype Machine to let labels and artists service music bloggers – a key component of the music scene now – with new and pre-release tracks. The Hype Machine is going to be able to aggregate the output of blogs, but more importantly the bloggers get official releases without having to be forced to release an MP3 into the wild.
In addition labels/artists can track listens and pull analytics on who and how the content is being consumed, as tracks get released. Since labels and bloggers haven’t traditionally got on, this move is potentially a lot more productive for both sides. Bloggers will be able to embed a range of players from the Berlin-based SoundCloud allowing them to promote the music of their favourite artists using the tracks that were originally uploaded. Domino are the first label to sign up as well as artists including Massive Attack, Marina and the Diamonds, and Delphic. Now a million on SoundCloud. SoundCloud has just announced they have hit a million users.
It followers their deal earlier this year with The Hype Machine, but it’s clear this is a startup that is scaling globally now from its base in Berlin. The audio sharing site that’s geared towards those who work in the music industry is an online audio platform which lets musicians collaborate, promote and distribute their music via widgets and apps. It’s been variously described as a “Flickr for audio” or a “Vimeo for audio”, but whatever it is, it’s clearly got the kinds of tools and distribution platform which is winning both the hearts and business of artists.
But it’s going way more mainstream than that implies, becoming the source of stories like Lindsay Lohan trying to become a pop star and breaking new tracks and albums from established artists like The Foo Fighters. SoundCloud had a €2.5 million Series A funding in April 2009 from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. SoundCloud hits 3 Million users. 10 February '11, 02:11pm Follow Just the other day we declared 2011 “The year of social audio”, and new figures from SoundCloud today seem to bear that out. The audio sharing platform has announced that it has reached 3 million registered users. On its own, that sounds like a large number, but when you factor in that user numbers have grown by 1 million in under 100 days, that’s some growth spike for the startup that was founded in August 2007. The news follows a “Global Meetup Day” yesterday, where the startup’s users staged gatherings in 517 cities around the world. SoundCloud says that its growth spike “shows no signs of subsiding”, news that should come as encouraging for its investors.
The startup recently expanded its focus from being a musician-focused service, to one aimed at anyone want to share audio such as podcasts and interviews. Soundcloud Hits 5 Million Registered Users. Music-sharing platform Soundcloud has become mighty noisy over the past year by adding 4 million registered users in one year, which now brings it to the 5 million user mark. This comes just a few months after the company announced 3 million users. Soundcloud, which reports that it is currently adding 20,000 registered users per day, has innovated a lot during the past year after launching in 2008. It released both iPhone and Android applications, as well as a Mac App, and added the ability to record directly from all of its platforms.
Its API has also been integrated across an array of social tools, including popular blogging platform Tumblr. Tech-savvy actor Ashton Kutcher has also joined the site, and invested in the company via his fund, A-Grade. An increasing number of artists (as well as journalists and other sound creators) are turning to Soundcloud in order to share music and get feedback.
Check out the infographic below for more facts about the company's history. Is SoundCloud the YouTube of Audio? There are no shortage of consumption apps on the Web, especially since the iPad (in many ways the ultimate Web consumption device) arrived on the scene. But what about content creation apps? In the Web 2.0 era, we saw the rise of blogging platforms, social networks, and media sharing services like Flickr and YouTube. Some people say that 2011 will be about content curation, via services like Twitter and Tumblr. But I think there's still a lot of action in the content creation space. I'll be exploring some of the best and most promising content creation services over the coming weeks here on ReadWriteWeb, in a series called 'The Creative Web.' The first service we'll look at is a startup from Berlin, Germany, called SoundCloud.
Two prominent VC firms invested in SoundCloud earlier this year: Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures. SoundCloud is being used by professional musicians and amateurs alike. SoundCloud recently went over 3 million registered users. Do you use SoundCloud?