Company: SoundCloud
Founders: Alexander Ljung (CEO – Chief Executive Officer), Eric Wahlforss (CTO – Chief Technology Officer)
Date founded: August 2007 in Stockholm Sweden Date launched: October 2008
Headquarters: Berlin, Germany
Description: Soundcloud is a privately owned and operated company that functions as an “online audio distribution platform”. A prime social networking tool, Soundcloud enables users to share their creations through Tumblr, Foursquare, Facebook, and Twitter, and has its own mobile app for iOS and Android. It is a growing global enterprise that allows registered users to upload, record, and distribute their own authentic music to millions of other artists and listeners worldwide. In addition to music, Soundcloud is also home to a wide variety of podcasts, where members can create their own content, free of restrictions. With over “175 million monthly listeners, 12 hours of uploaded audio per minute”, and reaching “200 countries per hour”, Soundcloud has earned its spot as “the world’s leading social sound platform”.
Experience: SoundCloud offers a place for music producers and consumers to come together (quora.com). SoundCloud offers a means to easily find all of your favorite music in one place, be it a mixtape from a local artist, an EP (extended play recording) from an up and coming artist, or new singles from your favorite celebrity. “SoundCloud is the world’s leading social sound platform where anyone can create sounds” and “easily share them privately with their friends or publicly to blogs, sites, and social networks” (soundcloud.com).
What distinguishes Soundcloud from the competition?
Instead of the more passive listening experience like with Pandora and Spotify, “SoundCloud allows anybody in the world to share audio that they’ve created, whether it’s music, to recordings of their kids on their phone to speeches from Obama.” (Alexander Ljung, CEO)
*Important Note: Soundcloud is “copyright friendly”, meaning that users can upload copyrighted material (i.e. remixes to original songs) without liability
Major Milestones:
- August 2007: Founded
- October 2008: Launched
- April 2009: Received $3,609,850.00 for funding from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures
- May 2010: Announced one million subscribers
- January 2011: Confirmed that SoundCloud had raised $10,000,000 for funding from Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures
- June 2011: Announced five million subscribers
- June 2011: Received investments from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary
- January 2012: Announced ten million registered users
- December 2012: Newer SoundCloud version was released to general public — more sharing options, continuous play, mobile device compatibility
- December 2012: SoundCloud users made up 8% of the global internet and users were uploading 10 hours of content each minute
- March 2013: Twitter announced SoundCloud as a third-party music partner
- January 2014: Copyrighted material began to consistently appear
- December 2014: Attracted more than 175 million monthly users
Bibliography:
Mac, Ryan. “Upload And Share Music — Or Any Noise: The Beauty Of SoundCloud.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 17 Apr. 2013. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.
“Podcasting on SoundCloud.” Podcasting on SoundCloud. SoundCloud, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.
Polaske, Dan. “Why SoundCloud Will Beat Other Streaming Music Services.” Hypebot. Hypebot, 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.
Rusli, Evelyn M., Hannah Karp, and Douglas MacMillan. “SoundCloud’s Valuation Could Top $1.2 Billion With New Fundraising.” Digits RSS. Dow Jones & Company, Inc., 9 Dec. 2014. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.
“Soundcloud Stats and Facts.” DMR Directory of Social Network, App and Digital Stats. DMR, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.
Road to triumph 