Interview: SoundCloud

Well, where to begin? SoundCloud is without doubt the world’s leading social sound platform allowing absolutely anyone (with an internet connection) to share sounds online. Cleverly linked in with social media networks SoundCloud allows users to easily share sounds privately, just with friends or publicly to blogs, sites and social networks such as Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Foursquare.

Founded in 2007, SoundCloud is an ever growing community of over 14 million sound creators, ranging from musicians and record labels through to audio bloggers, field recorders and anyone wanting to capture sounds that matter to them.

Due to be hosting workshops in Delhi following sessions in both Mumbai and Bangalore last weekend as part of India Goes 3D we decided to catch up with SoundCloud representative Petar Djekic to find out more about what to expect from the workshop sessions in Delhi and what he's looking to achieve from his visit in India:

So, how’s it going?

Awesome! India has been a blast so far. Everybody is so welcoming.

What have you been up to today?

I've just arrived here in New Delhi and can't wait to see what the scene here is up to. New Delhi is the final stop on our tour after Mumbai and Bangalore and everything has been going great so far.

In the year 2012, you’d have to have been living under a rock to not have heard about SoundCloud. Just in case people are not in tune with what it is you do, give us a quick run down:

In a nutshell, SoundCloud is a social sound platform that makes it easy to share, broadcast, track and promote sounds that you create across social networks, websites, the SoundCloud community or simply between friends.

How big is the SoundCloud team and what’s your role?

It's hard to keep track sometimes because we've been growing so fast but we're about 80 people right now. At SoundCloud I'm part of our awesome product team and responsible for all things search and discovery. Helping our users to find the right sounds at the right time is most important to me. Over 3 million different tags show the breadth of sounds on the platform and it's such an interesting challenge to make all these sounds easily discoverable for our users.

Is the direction it has taken and what it currently stands for today, what it always was meant to be?

SoundCloud was born out of the realisation that sound is an untapped territory on the Web compared with images and video. Pushing the boundaries of what sound on the web means is something that is very important to us.

Why do you think it has become so popular?

I think the key to SoundCloud’s rapid growth has been the understanding of the simplicity, breadth and potential of sound. That sound is not just music but everywhere around you. We're really happy to see people using SoundCloud in so many different ways today, from marriage proposals to Snoop Dogg collaborating with users all over the world - it's all there.

You’ve been invited to India to host workshops as part of 'India Goes 3267771' with a specific emphases on ‘getting your music out there’. Has this always been the main inspiration for SoundCloud?

In the past music discovery was a very human thing. Often you would find out about new stuff through friends or digging through your local record store. Over the last few years new powerful technologies have emerged that are recommending us interesting new music at the click of a button. During the workshop I'll be looking at how these technologies work, why meta data is crucial to them and what you need to be aware of if you want others to easily discover your stuff on SoundCloud.

What are you looking forward to most within these workshops?

I'm really looking forward to getting in touch with our community here in India and learning about how they are using SoundCloud.

How many users does SoundCloud now have worldwide?

We're now 14 million users and counting. Our community in India is fantastic and has already organised meet-ups in cities like New Delhi and Bangalore for our upcoming Global Meetup Day in May.

Anything exciting lined up for the future you can tell us about?

Well, we definitely have some very exciting stuff coming up this year but I'm afraid I can't tell you about it right now!

THE SAME 3 QUESTIONS:

3 Most Inspirational Artists:

John Frusciante
Tim Buckley
Kyuss

3 favourite albums of all time:

Tough one since there are there so many. I'll go with:
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Dr. Dre - The Chronic
Black Sabbath - Sabotage

Favourite 3 artists of the moment:

Modeselektor
Siriusmo
Santigold

**You'll be able to catch Petar's SoundCoud workshop as part of India Goes 3D this Friday April 27 (3pm onwards) at blueFROG Delhi. The day will begin at 10am with a host of other activities and talks - Full schedule of all talks/workshops can be seen here**