Yesterday was an exciting day. We (SoundCloud) announced our first serious round of VC funding. It was fun too to do a little inpromptu interview with Dubber from New Music Strategies about what we do at SoundCloud and what the funding means for our future plans.
Dave from Soundcloud from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.
PS. I can’t help but cringe a bit when I see or hear myself being interviewed. Count how many times I say ’so’ 
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A short while ago I blogged about my goal to raise more money for good causes in a year than I earn. I’m not sure if I’ll achieve this New Years Resolution but I’m certainly going to try and enjoy myself whilst trying. And I can now unveil the first project - Twestival.fm. We’re aiming to raise $20,000 in just two weeks by asking artists and labels to donate tracks. These tracks will then be made available on the main website and anyone streaming or downloading any music will be asked to leave a ‘tip’ in a Radiohead ‘pay what you want’ style.
It’s a great little project that combines two of the things I love… Twitter + digital music. It also utilises SoundCloud (disclaimer - I work for SoundCloud) and the excellent new payment platform Tipjoy. It’s actually been quite simple to put together. I ended up putting the site together myself using a simple Wordpress template and teaching myself a little CSS so that I could lay it out how we needed. And then it was just a case of putting all the different pieces together using a little know-how and a lot of copy and paste. There’s still a lot of features that we’d like to implement and some of the processes are a little too manual and time-consuming but overall it’s worked out okay (so far!).
So what’s the history…? It was whilst working on another forthcoming project that @Stef (creator of the fabulous Odadeo and Isowish sites amongst others) gave me the idea to contact the people at Twestival to see if they needed some help co-ordinating a digital music project to run alongside the Twestivals taking place in 170+ cities across the world on February 12th. The super hard-working @Amanda kindly and quickly put me in touch with an enthusiastic @Renate. Renate runs Madhouse Collective and is leading the charge on the music and entertainment front for Twestival so we soon hatched a plan over some introductions and dim sum in Soho (she paid, so I owe her lunch!).
Given the big time constraints and sudden busy-ness of many of the developers we intended to reach out to we’ve had to keep the project as simple as possible but it’s amazing how much you can achieve with the free tools available on the web in 2009. A site such as Twestival.fm which allows users to upload audio, make 100+ tracks available for streaming and download as well as taking micro-payments and cross-posting personalised messages to another website (ie. Twitter) would have either been impossible or very expensive to build just 2-3 years ago. It has cost no money to build and without any professional technical expertise. Our only costs so far have been the domain name registration, the SoundCloud Pro account (which was kindly donated anyhow) and the dim sum!
So what can you do to help?:
1) if you’re an artist/label then please go to http://twestival.fm and upload a track that you’d like to donate right now.
2) if you’re not an artist/label then please tell any that you know (and if you’re reading this blog then I’m sure there’s a high chance that you do know at least one).
3) if you Twitter please ask people to follow @twestivalfm
4) if you’re a company that might like to partner with or sponsor twestival.fm then please get in touch
5) go to the site sometime between 5th and 19th February and donate at least $5 to the cause!
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I originally posted this at http://blog.soundcloud.com/2009/01/22/yes-we-cannes/
Earlier this week 8,000 members of the international music industry descended upon Cannes for the Midem conference and it’s digitally-focused sister event MidemNet. The clouds hung heavy over the conference hall for the first few days. But despite rumours of lower attendances this year the overall vibe was of a positive more forward-thinking music industry that is ready to leverage all the tools and opportunities at its disposal.
For our part, SoundCloud was selected to pitch at the MusicAlly / MidemNet New Business Showcase. The showcase, now in its second year, aims to “highlight the most enterprising, innovative and inspiring business ideas to help to create value and move the music industry forwards in the 21st century”. That might be a bit of a mouthful but we were thrilled to be taking part. And even more excited to be announced as winners after a great pitch on stage by Alex.
Amongst all the buzz we were busy spreading the word face-to-face with a steady stream of labels, publishers, artists, A&R’s and other partners. Expect to see some interesting new users, integrations and activities on the Cloud in the very near future. By night we were busy hustling, drinking and catching up with familiar faces at the many events, meetups and dinners going on in and around Cannes. A big thanks to Topspin, Warp and Tru Thoughts for providing some of our highlights.
Overall, the one thing that’s clear from talking to everyone is that it’s going to be a very exciting 2009!
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I’ve just been clearing out my blog reader in preparation of 2009, reading posts that I’ve flagged, weeding out some of the less interesting blogs I’m subscribed to and marking quite a lot of unread posts as read.
One post I just stumbled upon whilst doing this was a small little announcement from Digital Tunes about their new public profiles. Every user now has their own public profile with info on what artists they like, favourite labels and a purchase history. Unfortunately there isn’t an RSS feed for my purchase history but it wouldn’t be difficult to add it. And it got me thinking why doesn’t every store have this as standard. It seems like the most natural thing in the world that you’d want to be able to publish and share with others what tracks you were buying. Just like I share what music I’m listening to using Last.fm. And it’s not exactly the biggest technical challenge to implement.
I don’t actually use Digital Tunes much, I get my regular dubstep fix from Boomkat, so my profile is fairly inactive. But I really love some of the things they are doing with their site, for example see their awesome SoundCloud integration, Tunecards (using Moo) and Facebook integration. So why is it taking stores so long to innovate and implement features like these?
I hear that 7digital is building an API which could lead to some interesting things and younger startups like PeoplesMusicStore are doing some cool stuff but I’m really surprised we haven’t seen as much innovation in the digital music retail space in 2008 as we have with other digital music websites and apps.
Last last Tuesday night my wife gave birth to our beautiful son Joshua William Haynes. Being a very proud father, and a bit of a geek, one of the first things I did after coming back from the hospital was to set little Joshie up with his own Flickr account. I really like the thought that my son can take charge of the account when he’s older, just like my parents gave me my first photo album, with a record of his early years. Being born into a hyper-connected, web 2.0 world, I’m sure storing and sharing his photos online will seem like the most natural thing in the world to him.
But it was interesting then to get an opposite reaction from some of my family members and friends. My wife felt a little uneasy sharing these photos publicly (choosing to just email one or two photos to our antenatal friends) whilst my mum actually apologized for taking a look at the photos without asking me first. They all think Flickr is absolutely great, but there’s something hard coded into them that resists it still. Having done something one way for so many years it is difficult for them to make the shift.
That’s something that I’ve noticed in my work life too. At SoundCloud for example we’re setting new standards for music industry professionals to send, share and move their audio files. It’s clear that a lot of people are impressed by what they see and somehow can’t understand how they never expected a better way of doing things. However they still often turn back to old methods such as the generic file sharing services like Yousendit or Sendspace in their daily workflow. But that’s okay, like my families use of Flickr, it just takes a while for people to change old habits.
And I guess, with a newborn son I’ll have to change some of my old habits too!
An essential part of any new music service should be the ability to share the music. Whether it’s collaborative playlists on Spotify, embedding a widget or just sharing a link it must be as easy and as simple as possible.
Recent tweaks to the SoundCloud ‘Share’ function include a newly improved (and viral) Facebook player and a super simple 3 click ‘Share on Myspace‘ which sure beats the hell out of having to copy and paste the HTML code.
One of my favourite features of online jukebox Songza is the “> Twitter this” button, something that SoundCloud was lacking. But now that SoundCloud is open to the public I put this suggestion forward on a quick email to our dev team today. Exactly 1hr and 9mins after hitting send this appeared on the Share-box above each track on SoundCloud…
which resulted in this:
It’s just one perk of working with such a good team of people!! If that’s what can happen in just over an hour I can’t wait to see what SoundCloud will be like in 6 months.
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Last night I found myself at Shunt for Netaudio London, a small but interesting festival for netlabels. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but as SoundCloud was hosting the Wi-fi Media lounge I headed up on the Saturday (a little wearily after just getting back from Amsterdam) to hook up with fellow SoundClouders Alex and Nils who were both over from Berlin.
Shunt itself is one of the most stunning venues I’ve been to in recent years, a members-club comprised of a large sprawling maze of railway bridges right next to London Bridge station. After a particularly fraught journey to the actual venue itself it felt a little like entering a strange deam heading down a long dark tunnel into the bizarre mix of audiovisual installations, quirky spaces and laptop DJ’s. Chance meetings Jonas and Martin D from Last.fm only actually heightened the surreal dream-like experience but by the time I left I wished I could have stayed longer to soak up more of the atmosphere.
If it wasn’t for the suprisingly annoying lack of mobile phone reception once inside, the space would make for an awesome (un)conference. I’ve heard that Shunt might be closing in the near future to make way for a shopping centre so make sure you find an excuse to get there before it closes.
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I was re-organising some music the other week when I dug out a real blast from the past. Despite it being a few years old now, I figured I really should get it up on SoundCloud.
The music in question is InSoul Sessions Vol. 2 - a compilation album mixed by myself and DJ partner Tom McCarthy and released in 2003 on Inspirit Music. It was strange listening back to it as I hadn’t heard it for a while but some of the tracks still sound awesome; Dharma One’s ‘Belong’ being one of those.
Anyway, as I’ve been doing quite a bit of reminiscing lately (due to my impending fatherhood) I thought I’d share it with you. Plus it’s a good excuse to be using my SoundCloud account here on this blog.
There’s a few more tracks and remixes we did from around this time that I’m gonna dig out as well, so keep your eyes peeled.
We’re pleased to announce the next instalment of the OpenMusicMedia Meet and this time we have Eric Wahlforss from Berlin-based startup SoundCloud as our special guest. In a recent blog post Eric argues that in a post-scarcity publishing world, the key is to own the most relevant copy. As he explains:
This sounds a bit cryptic, agreed. Let me try to explain what I mean. The point I’m trying to make is actually very simple. The Web is a giant copying machine. And yet, if people can avoid having to copy something, they will. The problem is that today, the music industry suffers quite a bit from illegal file sharing–a giant copy party. What is going to happen over the coming years is that this copy fest will wind down. Yes, it will! And the reason for that is that there will be services that let people listen to their music without having to copy files and manage them.
Let’s go back to the cryptic title of this post… The key, being a music service or a label or an artist in this world of link-passing, is to own the most relevant copy. With most relevant I mean the most happening copy, the most accessible copy, the most usable copy, the coolest copy, the earliest copy, the most exclusive copy, the copy with the best sound quality, the most permanent copy, the most social copy, the most remixed copy, the most authentic copy, the most interoperable copy, etc.
As usual expect a lot of good conversation, interesting people and plenty of debate before during and after we hear from Eric. For the uninitiated here’s some more info.
WHAT: the OpenMusicMedia Meet is a group that gets together regularly in London to discuss, explore and shape the future of digital music and media. The format is open and everyone is invited. The group serves as a meeting point for people with similar interests and open up conversations between them. Everyone is encouraged to hang around after the discussion to eat and drink. The William IV serves great food!
WHO: A melting pot of label execs, journalists, social media types, digital distributors & retailers, entrepreneurs, music geeks, bloggers and future thinkers. The group is open to anyone who has a professional or personal interest in this space.
WHERE: Upstairs at the William IV pub. Just a 5 min stroll from Old Street tube. http://www.williamthefourth.com/
DRESS CODE: Informal. No vested interests, no politics and no agendas.
ADMISSION: An open mind, open ears and a passion for the topics discussed. There is no charge, though the more booze you buy the nicer our hosts will be. After our discussion we encourage everyone to stay and enjoy the great food at the William IV. Looking forward to seeing you all there!
I still haven’t got round to thinking about a redesign for this blog but I have been making a few little tweaks here and there adding some fun new tools, plugins and widgets. Here is a quick run down of a few of them.
1) SoundCloud DropBox - a couple of posts ago I told you all about an excellent service called SoundCloud. Well I’ve finally got round to setting up my DropBox. You’ll see it at the bottom of the right hand column. If you want to send me any music, please use this. No more yousendit or random FTP drops pls.
2) Disqus - I don’t actually get that many comments here yet. I really should start publicising the site a bit more. But I’m still a sucker for a fantastic new plugin and Disqus is just that. Disqus adds a community dimension to the comments on this blog and hopefully makes it easier for you to post.
3) Zemanta - I’ve been using Zemanta on this site for a while now and I’m wondering how I ever lived without it. Zemanta is actually a Firefox plugin(!) that suggests contextually relevant links, pictures, related content and tags using their own semantic analysis engine. It runs extremely smoothly, saves me time and really adds to each post.
4) Twitter Tools - this is a nice little plugin for Wordpress that posts to my Twitter stream everytime I make a post with the link and subject. It can also automatically create blog posts with a weekly or daily digest of my tweets. I turned this feature off however as it didn’t really suit my needs. I prefer just displaying my tweets as an RSS feed in the sidebar.
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