SoundCloud: Business model

Résumé du document

The company SoundCloud has been created in 2007 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Alex Ljung and the artist Eric Wahlforss. As soon as the company has been created, it has been moved to Berlin, Germany, because according to the founders, it is the best city for everything regarding the music industry in the European Union. The company is an online audio distribution platform on which each user can collaborate, promote and distribute one's own musical project. The first intention of the founders was to allow the musicians to share their records, but over the years the website has been developed and is now a real tool for publishing and distribution.

Everyone can be a user; one does not need to register to use the website. Indeed, the use is really easy and free for everyone, but as I will explained later, some paying subscriptions are possible for people who need more features. There is a search bar allowing the user to find the music, the artist or the publisher he would like to find, and he does not need any username or
password, the use is totally free.

Extraits

[...] Users and listeners can write down some comments and like the tracks, which makes of SoundCloud a real social media. One of the companies I was working for this summer, as an audio branding agency usually uploaded its own music creations on SoundCloud before sending the link through emails to all of its data base. This way, the customers of the company were aware of the musical activity of the company and could judge of its capacity to create good music. [...]

[...] (Retrieved from Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_API] on Wednesday, January 3rd 2013) Indeed, if SoundCloud starts to use other application such as the automatic localization, that we can find thanks to Foursquare that would make an even better location-based sound application and website. The application and the website are both really easy to use. One just needs to click on a large orange button to start recording one's audio track. On the iPad, which is larger than simple mobile phones, the company had the idea to use to extra space to add more interesting interactions with the sounds. [...]

[...] According to SoundCloud CEO, the website is successful thanks to its focus on being the absolutely social platform for audio pieces on the internet. It is easy, social to use and to share, and it is the future. SoundCloud does have a real business model that creates a lot of big revenues to the company, which is the freemium model, that provides advanced analytics only for those who want and need it. SoundCloud, after opening two locations in London, Great Britain, and Berlin, Germany, just opened up a new San Francisco office in California, close to Google and Facebook offices. [...]

[...] Therefore, once a sound has been uploaded on the platform by a user, this one knows that he is fully responsible of the copyright of the sound. The user needs to be sure that he does not break any law by uploading this kind of sound. By acting like that, the website protects itself pretty efficiently. It has a passive attitude and will be considered as well in case of law violation. [...]

[...] Nowadays, the website, or the really easy-to-use widget is having more and more users and its notoriety is incredibly growing. It has reached more than 10 million users (retrieved from the article: “SoundCloud: FOR GIVING THE INTERNET A VOICE”, written by Gray, Tyler, David and Lidsky in March 2012 for Fast Company; Mar2012, Issue 163, p140-141, including the biggest music stars such as 50 cents, an American rapper, or Russell Brand. The 2 most incredible thing in this amazing ascension is that the last million of users has been gained in only 45 days. [...]