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This article was taken from the July 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Since its launch in October 2008, SoundCloud's orange waveform bars have become a common sight on the screens of music fans.
Founded by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, the Berlin-based company now has 40 million registered users, with five percent paying for the site's Pro and Pro Unlimited plans, and reaches more than 200 million people each month. But with $63 million (£41 million) in investment, it hasn't yet made a profit.
After a redesign last year, and the addition of new advertising features launched in March, CEO Ljung is aiming to change that.
He tells Wired why he thinks sound is the future of the web -- and why the time is right for SoundCloud to take on YouTube.
Wired: SoundCloud has been variously called the YouTube, the Twitter, the Instagram and the Kindle Direct Publishing for music. Which of these makes the most sense to you?
Alexander Ljung: The YouTube comparison works pretty well.
YouTube is pretty good with social music as it is -- nearly 40 per cent of its plays come from music videos, and it's currently the biggest online streaming site in the world.
Sure, but the main thing you go there for is to watch things. That means it doesn't really work as well if you're only listening to stuff. It's focused on the watching experience. We're more focused on the listening experience. It's about different intentions, and how those intentions get interpreted on to different platforms. The beautiful thing with sound is that you can listen to it while you're doing other things. I can be in the car, or I can be walking down the street -- but it starts with the intention, then you figure out the best solution.
Did intentions change with SoundCloud, leading to the redesign?
We got to the point where more than ten hours of sound were being uploaded every minute. We wanted to make it a lot easier for people to find the sounds they wanted to listen to. We rebuilt the search algorithm, but we also added the idea of reposting sounds, like you're retweeting them. It's a great way for people to show others what they're finding interesting.
There's a shift from users creating sounds, to following artists?
Some creators have found they're getting more followers and more people listening to their stuff. So features that helped casual listeners find stuff are also interesting for someone who is uploading.
Does being more consumer-facing make it easier to monetise?
We've launched the first steps, with branded and promoted profiles. We think brands can be part of a very interesting community. But we're making sure it happens in the right way. Take Red Bull -- the brand created a piece of music with a visual behind it, and it informed people about an event at SXSW, where people could submit music. People have submitted a bunch of stuff, reposted it and showcased it on their profiles. That fits very naturally. We're looking for brands that see themselves as creators.
It sounds like you're trying to recreate the fan/artist relationship on SoundCloud, using a fan/brand relationship.
It's similar -- one of the greatest things the internet does is let people who aren't necessarily close to each other feel as though they are close. For example, I'm not close with 50 Cent, but I can still see him upload something to SoundCloud. I can feel this direct connection. That's something that can be also useful between a fan and brand. You can create this much closer connection than you had before.
Is that the sort of relationship you envisaged at launch?
It's strange, because we had the idea that SoundCloud would develop into something big and would be used around the world, but we didn't think an artist such as 50 Cent would use it -- we thought it would be limited to up-and-coming artists. So, we were a little surprised to see 50 Cent and Bruce Springsteen uploading stuff on the platform. Although, in hindsight, it makes perfect sense. It's just something that happened along the way.
And fans seem to be collaborating with artists.
You see Beyoncé putting something up and asking people to remix it, and it generates thousands of remixes of that song. The level of creativity that can happen around an artist like that is pretty amazing. Beyoncé ended up Skyping one of the people who remixed the track, and he pretty much fell off his chair. Cool stuff happens with those collaborations.
Can you track those collaborations and watch genres develop and spread?
I'd say we are definitely noticing it more. We don't do it with analytics, although we might do in the future. When dubstep was emerging, some of the early parts of it happened in SoundCloud.
When a new genre is beginning to be defined and when new sorts of collaborations are happening, SoundCloud's a really good platform for people doing that. It doesn't mean we are defining new genres, it just means that SoundCloud tends to be a helpful platform for that kind of work.
So you see SoundCloud as being part of a growing remix culture?
I think culture has become much more participatory than ever -- it's not three big artists setting the scene for everybody, it's way more involved. There are more niches for people to go into, more space for different kinds of things. We have some people who are into dubstep, some people who are into the sound of songbirds.
People can find their own niches and participate.
What can we expect for the rest of 2013?
We're doing a lot of work on mobile apps. Mobile is going to be even more massive because sound is consumable while you're doing other things, such as driving your car to work or playing stuff on your smartphone. We are moving towards this future where we're listening to a lot more things throughout the day, where the sounds that we hear are like a companion for us.
How does that change what SoundCloud will look like in five years' time?
We think a lot about how we can bring people closer via interaction through sound -- how to make a connection. The next few years are about scale: we think we have a good chance of overtaking YouTube in terms of scale. The biggest challenge is timing: we're kind of impatient.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
