Fif-TECH-Teen: SoundCloud Q&A
This week, I was fortunate enough to have a Q&A session via e-mail with Alexander Ljung, founder and CEO for SoundCloud.
For those who aren’t familiar with SoundCloud, the website began as a platform for musicians to share recordings with each other, but then transformed into a full publishing tool which also allows musicians to distribute their tracks. I love this site and spend most of my nights downloading new, unique material by upcoming artists and producers. I would recommend SoundCloud to everyone looking for new, unreleased music, people looking to sign artists to their label or for DJ’s looking for new and unique sounds to create a whole new set jam-packed of music that the audience has probably never heard.
I would like to thank Alex Ljung and Kristina Weise for taking their time away from their busy schedules to reply to my questions. I realize that not many fifteen year old “kids” get the opportunity to do this and I am very grateful.
Tattletech: In brief, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Alexander Ljung: My name is Alexander Ljung. I am the founder & CEO of SoundCloud, the leading social sound platform on the web. Since its launch in 2008 with my co-founder, Eric Wahlforss (CTO), I have been responsible for all aspects of the company’s strategy, vision, and leadership.
TT: What was the vision behind SoundCloud?
AL: Originally, SoundCloud was born out of frustration with the options available for sending and receiving large music and audio files over the web. [Co-Founder and CTO] Eric Wahlforss was (and still is) a musician, while I was working as a sound designer. We worked together on a couple of music projects, and at the time we had to make do with either nascent online file locker services or clunky email attachments to send elements of tracks that we were working on to each other–neither of which were particularly intuitive or much fun to use. More than anything we wanted to build a way for sound creators and artists to showcase their work and streamline collaboration between people.
TT: Do you have a musical background?
AL: Prior to SoundCloud, I worked in sound design for feature films.
TT: What are your musical influences?
AL: Björk, Rick Ross, Arvo Part, Gregory Isaacs and Sigur Rós.
TT: What was your motivation? Passion for music? Money?
AL. (1) Sound is fundamental part of the human experience; it’s a key part of life. As a previous sound designer, I recognize how much we use sound and value it in our everyday lives, but it’s underrepresented somehow. The web does a great job of making people more social and it’s odd to me that sound has not been largely represented there. My goal is to change that, to make sound just a part of our everyday online life as it is in our offline.
(2) It’s an amazing time to be a tech entrepreneur as we have the opportunity to influence hundreds to millions of people with a small team that believes in the same passion.
TT: Have any well known artists come up through SoundCloud? If so, who?
AL: Numerous artists from Lady Gaga (sharing a track on Christmas Day that she recorded one night while on the Monster Ball tour by uploading to SoundCloud and sharing across her social networks), to 50 Cent (has over 120K followers and generates massive amounts of plays from regularly uploading freestyles, new tracks and remixes, while engaging a community with such moves as asking young producers to create on top of his freestyles), to M83 (sharing promotional tracks and remixes, while using SoundCloud Labs projects such as social unlock while amassing a following of 50K+ just on SoundCloud).
TT: What is the future for SoundCloud?
AL: We’re part of a larger movement to unmute the web and make sound a key part of it, whatever shape that takes. That’s what we’re trying to do with SoundCloud.
TT: Do you think that SoundCloud is an effective social media tool? There’s nothing that is as simple to create as sound.
AL: Here are a few reasons it is so effective:
- Simplicity: Twitter is popular because it gives users a way to express themselves in only 140 keystrokes. But now everybody with a smartphone has a microphone in their pocket and it takes only one click to record something. It’s a lot less intrusive to record a conversation or sound snippet than it is to point a video camera in somebody’s face.
- Multitasking: video requires your undivided attention, but you can listen to audio in the background while reading or doing other things.
Creation tools are evolving. People often associate audio with music that’s professionally recorded by major label artists, but the tools to record and remix sounds are becoming cheaper and easier to use.
Sound is connected to your emotional centers more than video. Don’t believe it? Try plugging your ears the next time you’re watching a scary movie.
TT: How does SoundCloud make enough money to secure survival?
AL: Signing up for SoundCloud is free, but we offer paid subscriptions to premium services that allow bigger uploads, easier sharing and more.
TT: High point of the journey to create SoundCloud?
AL: Our recent 10 million user announcement shows the incredible support of our stellar community.
TT: Yes I heard, Congratulations! How did you finance the start up?
AL: The company received angel funding in 2007 and 2008 by a small group of private investors with backgrounds in the music production, music software, web start-up and investment sectors. Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures then invested in 2009 and Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures in 2010. In January 2012, SoundCloud announced an undisclosed amount in a fundraising round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. GGV Capital also participated.
TT: I know that you guys work with Facebook. Did you approach Facebook or did Facebook
approach you?
AL: We’ve always held a solid relationship with Facebook. They are a natural partner for SoundCloud because Facebook is the go-to social network and SoundCloud is swiftly becoming the default sound sharing platform. It’s a natural fit. You can read more on our blog.
TT:.Reasons for working with Facebook?
AL: We hope that more people on Facebook will share their sounds with one another. Second, we want to make it easier for people to discover new sounds online with their friends.
TT: How long did it take to create SoundCoud?
AL: We launched in 2008 but were developing the foundation for our company since 2006.
TT: Thank you for your time. Do you have any parting advice for young entrepreneurs?
AL: My advice to anyone thinking about starting a company is to just start. There is no time for hesitation. Try something new. You can’t let the fear of failure stop you. It’s easy to get started; it’s the afterwards part that is more challenging. So just start.
