As we hinted predicted four days ago, SoundCloud was indeed talking to Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures about investing. It’s confirmed today on their blog that both firms have made undisclosed investments.
SoundCloud was looking to raise another round since its last was in April 2009, from Doughty Hanson Ventures for EUR 2.5 million. Since then it has scaled in adoption and taken on bigger offices and more staff. → Read More
SoundCloud is courting more investment in the form of offers from Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures, if German startup blog Gruenderszene is to be believed. We’ve reached out to the company for comment. It’s likely that SoundCloud is looking to raise another round since its last was in April 2009, from Doughty Hanson Ventures for EUR 2.5 million. Since then it has scaled in adoption and taken on bigger offices and more staff. → Read More
Berlin-based startup SoundCloud, which is slowly moving from a music focused site to one where anyone can record and share audio, launched its iPhone app recently. It’s now dropped the Android version and it’s available in the Android Market now, for free. There is no significant difference with the iPhone app which we reviewed here. → Read More
Mixlr, which we previously described as a UStream-for-audio, has exited Beta and with it a wider remit: No longer is the live audio streaming service aimed at just DJs and musicians but now targets the likes of conference organisers, journalists, podcasters and public speakers too.
It’s a pivot not dissimilar to that made by SoundCloud recently, a service that Mixlr both competes with and complements since Mixlr recordings can be sent to SoundCloud. But that’s not all that’s changed. → Read More
Today, SoundCloud, an audio platform that has concentrated on music makers so far, makes a significant pivot into the wider sphere of audio sharing. Up until now SoundCloud has done a pretty incredible job of attracting well known artists to its platform such as The Foo Fighters, Kylie, Deadmau5, Moby and Caribou, who have used it to effectively socialise their music. But today Soundcloud releases the ability to record sound direct via the site, and via it’s updated iPhone app. That puts it into the realm of pure audio sharing platforms such as Cinch and Audioboo. In other news SoundCloud has also passed two million users.
SoundCloud’s new record facility on the site or iPhone apps lets users capture sound anywhere and put it into their waveform player to share it across social networks, websites, the SoundCloud community or privately between friends. The iPhone app also has the ability to add an image and location to the sound recording. This is exactly what Audioboo and Cinch do already for instance, but the social features on SoundCloud may well trump any existing player right now. Check out the screen grabs below. Having looked at the app I can see that I may shift my own audio recording to SoundCloud because the experience is really very good. → Read More
If you’ve created music playlists using iTunes, Spotify, Last.fm, YouTube, We Are Hunted, Winamp, Rhapsody, Soundcloud, or even if you’ve simply scribbled a list of your favorite tracks in a notepad file, you need to check out Playlistify soon. The basic, solid premise of the service is to let you enjoy your custom-made playlists anywhere you like.
I was looking for an excuse to write it up anyway, and now they’ve given me a decent one: they’ve added a new feature that lets you convert your music playlists into Twitter lists. → Read More
Like most of you, I too LIKE Facebook, and ever since my last TechCrunch post (How to Build Engaging One-of-Kind Facebook Fan Pages), I’ve been exploring and trying to find new ways to improve the creation process of a Page. This time, I’d like to focus on a how-to for the musicians among you. → Read More
Mixlr, a sort-of UStream for audio, wants to make it easy for DJs and bands to share and stream live performances to fans. The service, founded by London-based Rob Watson (a recent graduate of the Music Informatics department at the University of Sussex), is currently in a closed beta, although TechCrunch Europe has 200 invites to give away to readers.
In its current incarnation, Mixlr is a pretty simple offering, although that’s partly by design. Comprising of a Mac-only client (although a Windows and iPhone app is planned), users can plug-in any audio feed to their Mac and begin live streaming, pushing out a URL of their feed via Twitter, Facebook and MySpace or to share in other ways. Live performances can also be uploaded, archived, and tagged (including location), as well as sent to a SoundCloud account, a service that Mixlr both complements and potentially competes with. → Read More
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. → Read More
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. → Read More
[UK] BandCentral, a sort of ‘Basecamp for bands’, gets its official launch today, although an early version of the site was soft launched as far back as July 09.
The site provides tools for artists, managers and labels to project manage the business end of being in a band. Things like organising tours, managing fan databases, merchandising and accounting.
BandCentral was conceived by founder and CEO Wil Padley, a “digital creative” and bass player in the UK band The Domino State. Based on his experience of touring – his band has gigged across Europe and even supported Coldplay at the O2 arena – Padley saw the need for better tools to professionalise aspects of the experience and help bands stay organised. That’s rock ‘n’ roll nowadays, I guess.
Padley bootstrapped the early development of BandCentral, founded in June 08, while the London-based startup has since taken an undisclosed amount of Angel funding. → Read More
[Germany] SoundCloud – there’s now an app for that too. The audio sharing site that’s geared towards those who work in the music industry, has released a dedicated iPhone app. The Berlin-based company has also announced new price plans and a bunch of other enhancements to its overall service. First, however, let’s deal with the iPhone. → Read More
Hack Days are becoming increasingly popular, fostering innovation in technology and helping companies reach out to and engage with users. In this guest post, Dave Haynes (@Haynes_Dave), head of SoundCloud in the UK and founder of Music Hackday, argues that hack days also show a way forward for the wider music industry. Inside the Radialsystem V in Berlin, one of the city’s “new spaces for the arts”, the second Music Hackday has begun. There’s a real buzz of excitement within this diverse collection of people, some traveling from as far away as Boston, Stockholm, London and Amsterdam, who have just 24 hours to conceptualize, build and present the best possible ‘music hack’. → Read More
I’m a Web fanatic, I admit. But you probably already knew that… My work environment has been completely web based for years now. The same applies to my music. Like many people, I used to download music from Kazaa or eMule (Yeah, I know some of you still do). Most of the time now, I listen to music on the web and don’t have any need to download it. My laptop benefits the most from this inclination since it’s not weighed down by music files, thus saving me tons of space and virus headaches (you eMule users know what I’m talking about). Anyhow, if I do choose to download music, I can always do it over at iTunes or my favorite place in the web: Jamendo.
Music plays a large role in our lives. Since the web now plays an even bigger part, combining the two together has become unavoidable. The greatest thing about this powerful duo is that you don’t need to spend a lot of time searching for music you like — just use this nifty guide list and you’ll find just about everything you need to enjoy hours of good music. The sound quality changes from service to service, but overall, it’s good enough for regular web usage. → Read More
I’ve fiddled with the beta version a few times before, but I’m happy the Vienna, Austria-based startup is now ready to release its eponymous service, Play.fm, publicly so I can finally tell you about it, too. Yes, it’s another online music startup, but worth a second look if you want my opinion.
Here’s how the young company pitches the service (it’s hard to categorize in a short summary):
“PLAY.FM sets new standards for on-demand streaming radios: the beta version transforms the largest audio database of DJ sets and live recordings into an intelligent platform with various possibilities of participation.”
Ok, that didn’t really help either, so let me give it a shot. → Read More
SoundCloud, an audio sharing site geared towards music professionals, has closed a €2.5 million (around $3.3 million) funding round led by Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. As part of the deal, Stefan Tirtey of Doughty Hanson will join the company’s board of directors.
We last covered SoundCloud in October, when the site launched in a private beta. Since then it has opened to the public, and now claims 100,000 registered members. The site’s primary function is to help musicians, producers, and other professionals in the music industry share and collaborate around music tracks. These tracks tend to be quite large in size, which makes them difficult to transfer (typically musicians would be forced to resort to FTP or services like YouSendIt, which are hardly ideal for frequent music swapping). → Read More
Transferring large files on the web has always been a hassle, especially when you need to do it frequently. One field especially prone to this problem is the music industry – artists often collaborate with eachother by sending rough versions of tracks, but have to rely on clunky services like YouSendIt or FTP servers. SoundCloud, a German startup that launches on October 10, is looking to streamline this process by allowing an artist to upload a file once and easily distribute it to whomever they’d like. The site is currently in private beta, but you can grab one of 500 invites here.
SoundCloud isn’t meant as a consumer site – rather, it’s a service for industry professionals, including artists, music labels, and producers. From the outset, it’s clear that SoundCloud is very well designed, with an intuitive interface that falls firmly under “Web 2.0″. The site revolves around artist profiles and the tracks they’ve uploaded, which are presented in an embeddable basic music widget (you can see one below). Aside from standard playback, the widget also allows artists to open up their tracks to comments from outside visitors, which can be appended to specified times. → Read More
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