Founded in 2007, SoundCloud is an online music distribution center. The company was founded in Sweden though its headquarters are found in Berlin, Germany. With more than 40 million registered users and 200 million listeners, it’s one of the biggest musical websites on the internet. It’s start might have been a slow one, but this musical hub is quickly becoming one of the most relevant musical sites around, and it’s launching the careers of many.
SoundCloud History
When Alex Ljung, a sound designer, and Eric Wahlforss, an artist, got together in 2007 and decided to start a website that would provide musicians a platform to share their musical recordings and talents with one another, they had no clue that the site would grow so significantly over the follow six years. Originally designed so that musicians could simply share their sound and listen to provided feedback, musicians had no idea they would soon find their careers launched thanks in part to the site. Today, the site is a full publishing site that allows musicians to not only hear the musical styling of others as well as share their own, it’s a way for them to distribute their tracks and gain attention from fans and businesses.
At the time that the site was growing, MySpace was still a relevant website that allowed bands to show off their talents and their musical styling, but SoundCloud was overtaking the site as a much more popular and relevant musical site. SoundCloud quickly became more popular because it allowed musicians to distribute their music and interact with others in a simpler and more efficient manner.
It wasn’t long before the site was receiving funding from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures in a manner referred to as Series A funding. The $2.5 million SoundCloud received was used to enhance their operations and make the site a more functional and efficient tool. The following year, the site announced that more than 1 million people were registered subscribers to the network, which was a massive success for SoundCloud.
It wasn’t a year after that when the site announced they’d managed to secure more than $10 million in Series B funding from other ventures. A year later, the site announced their registration numbers had increased from 1 million to more than 5 million. The growth was a bit slow, but it was significant. Celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher began making investments with the company, and the popularity of the site was continuing to grow, and by now it was picking up the pace.
By the same time the following year, the site had increased its number of registered users to 10 million. By December 2012, the company launched a completely new layout for its users, which made it more spectacular and more user-friendly. Some of the most significant changes and features included the ability to listen to continued playback of particular tracks while on the site and to read the comments about any particular musical styling or track without obscuring the sound or the waveform. The site sent out mass emails to all registered users informing them that the original, “Classic” SoundCloud intercound would become obsolete as it was being discontinued for good.
SoundCloud Features
What artists love the most about SoundCloud, and what has been one of the most significant successes for the website, is the fact that the highly unique URLs that are provided to uploaded musical pieces are functional with other websites. What this means for artists is that they are provided with the ability to upload their music not only to SoundCloud, but also to their Facebook and Twitter accounts by embedding it to reach a larger and more complete audience. The process is simple. SoundCloud features a share button that links the music to any specific websites as designated, which means it takes users less than a second to share their uploaded files with other sites and a wider array of fans and listeners.
Some of the other popular features from the site includes the ability to listen to infinite amounts of music without having to stop or deal with limits. Users also have the capability to download as many as 100 songs from SoundCloud. Users who download music to the site have more than 120 minutes of audio available on their profiles, which allows for significantly sized downloads as well as numerous downloads. The best feature is that all of these unique and successful features are free of charge, which is one of the biggest draws for those who want to use the site and not pay a fee.
Statistically, the site is tremendously successful, especially when you consider the fact that 12 hours of audio is the average upload to the site per minute, per day. The diversity of the site is impressive, as well. SoundCloud is fairly evenly dispersed between small time musicians looking to make it big in the music industry and the other half are all big names in the music industry looking to share their new sounds, or to try out a different sound and receive feedback from their fans as well as other artists.
It was only recently that rumors began surfacing that Twitter was in talks with the proprietors of SoundCloud to purchase the website, and it had people upset. Why? Because SoundCloud has significantly overtaken the social media platform in a way that it’s not like the MySpace era of musical interaction. Users don’t want to go back to that type of platform and they don’t want to intermingle their Twitter accounts with their SoundCloud accounts and have the platform changed significantly to incorporate additional social media ideas. Fortunately, it panned out that the rumors Twitter was in talks to purchase SoundCloud were false and not even remotely true. However, that’s not to say that future talks of buyouts with other major social media sites are not possible.
How SoundCloud is Changing Music
What makes SoundCloud so important to the musical platform is the way in which the site works and how it provides music to its users. This is not a site where unknown artists and indie music makers go to play their hits and hope that 24 people like what they hear. This is a site in which anyone with any musical talent can upload their tracks and receive feedback from 40 million registered users and 200 million active listeners. It’s where Beyonce goes when she has a new track to play and it’s where your favorite underground singers and rappers go to release their new music.
Some of the most famous musicians in the world have used SoundCloud to get their start, and you will see hundreds more over the course of the coming years. It’s not American Idol, but it’s not a grunge site that’s going to allow semi-talented garage bands to get some listeners from time to time. SoundCloud is a serious contender in terms of making music and making famous faces famous. What’s unique about SoundCloud is that this is the place in which you will find all music before it has time to do things like hit Spotify, Pandora or even iTunes. SoundCloud is the original platform for hearing new tracks.
SoundCloud is fair game to all musicians. Just because Beyonce is more famous than someone without a record contract doesn’t make her more famous or more preferential on SoundCloud. If she has a new song to download, she downloads it just like the rest of the people in the world, and it’s getting just as much exposure as the average Joe from the apartment up the street looking to gain some exposure.
SoundCloud doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care if you have a multimillion dollar record deal or if you have no record deal and your mom is the only person in the world that’s ever heard your music. It’s a fair stage for all musicians who want some exposure, and that’s what people love about it. Search for pop music, and it will show you Beyonce, sure, but it will also show you thousands of other singers looking to gain recognition, and even overtake Beyonce one day as the reigning queen of pop music.
What Makes SoundCloud Successful
We’ve already discussed what makes this musical platform so successful in terms of registration and users, but what really makes it successful is promotion. The site reaps massive benefits from the registered users it signs up. How? The concept is simple; when bands, musicians and singers upload their sound to the site, they are doing it for recognition. They cannot be recognized if people are not inclined to listen to their sound. Users then take it upon themselves to promote their sound all over the internet. This drives traffic to the site. When listeners like what they hear, they are more inclined to sign up for a membership and to make it something they want to use on a regular basis.
Essentially, this is a website that has users that promote the site like crazy. When an unknown artist has 10 people sign up to hear their sound, it’s a success for SoundCloud. When a superstar artist promotes their new song on SoundCloud, thousands of additional users make their way to the site to hear the sounds and eventually register. It’s a win-win situation for all involved.
Artistry is also what makes this site so successful. It’s not just major players in the musical game attracting new fans. It’s major players in the musical game finding new talent. It’s superstar celebrity singers finding new talent to sign to their own record labels, or to ask to perform a collaboration. It’s Snoop Dogg finding unknown artists and making them famous with collaborations and deals that will make them millions. It’s a platform in which everyone has the same fair chance provided the talent is there.
While sites like MySpace made it possible for bands and musicians to get some exposure, SoundCloud is making is possible on a completely different level. This is the site to come to if you are in the mood for new music. When everything on the radio is old and boring and nothing exciting has come out in a while, you go to SoundCloud do discover and download new and exciting music. When you have a collective “mixed-tape” of music at your disposal in the way that SoundCloud has made possible, anything can happen.
It’s been the best thing to happen in the lives of musicians in a long time, because SoundCloud has changed the face of music for everyone in the world. For example, when Beyonce dropped her surprise album, she had many tracks that were produced and worked on by someone by the name of Boots. No one knew who Boost was, so what did they do? They hit up SoundCloud to find out just who he was, and that brought exposure not only to him, but to everyone that has worked with Boots in some way, shape or form in the past few years.
Celebrities use SoundCloud to promote their own music as well as the music of others. It’s not uncommon to see someone like Snoop sharing music he’s found on SoundCloud with the rest of the world through his social media capabilities, and it’s changing the face of music forever.
SoundCloud is not MySpace. SoundCloud is MySpace done right and done well. It’s the platform that will forever change the face of music and has already done so. What’s happened with SoundCloud in the past few years is astonishing and it’s impressive, but it’s nothing compared to what the site will do and accomplish in the next few years. It won’t be long before the world is looking back on today’s SoundCloud and discussing how this was just the beginning of what many think is the new face of music. It’s changing, certainly, and it’s changing for the better. SoundCloud is making the music industry bigger, better and more successful than ever, and it’s only continuing to do so.
(Photo by Sascha Baumann/Getty Images)
