Here's an interview I did with David Noel. He's a tech evangelical for
soundcloud, a company that takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals. Here's what he had to say:
me:
3:04 PM could you tell me a little bit about soundcloud?
3:06 PM i guess first of all, the general idea behind it, why you think it will work
oh, and then your role as a tech evangelist
David: ok well the last couple of years the web & music has always tried to answer the question of how to best solve "music" for consumers
3:07 PM all services seem to tackle the question of how can people best consume music and with an vast catalog
3:08 PM until now not many services have addresses creators of audio and solve the problem of moving music across the web
of course there are services targeted at artists but none has made it easy for people to send and receive music, people that do it all day
3:09 PM they had to use ftp, mediafire, rapidshare and all these ugly ad-supported services that don't pay respect to the actual track that gets sent, that was the basic premise for sc: you have a piece of audio and we help you move it across the web
3:11 PM me: ok, cool thanks for those two links
so, the people that you target are more everyday people sending and receiving music.
is that other artist's tracks, or their own tracks?
3:12 PM David: yes, it's mostly creators of music/audio and intermediaries that send and receive digital audio: labels, pluggers, digital pr, publisher, music supervisors, mastering studios etc
and independent "prosuming" artists
3:13 PM aside from sending, we provide nice players to easily push to social networks. basically sc is your control room for your audipo from where you distribute your tracks to where your fans are and where the discussion takes plae
place
3:14 PM in short: for artists: tools to showcase your work publicly - for people sending/receiving: send and receive private tracks
3:15 PM me: ok, very cool. do you see it being used by artists and the music industry the most?
or do you find a lot of fans using the site as well?
David: yes, artists and the industry are the folks actually working with the service and the service connects them with their fans
3:16 PM so if you see the players across the web, they're always from the perception of the fan, both are in a symbiotic relationship but the features of the services are tailored to producers not to fans
you won't see charts or discovery or recommendation features (aside from groups)
3:17 PM but a fan could sign up and follow artists and stay updated about new stuff in their dashboard - just like I do since I don't produce. I follow my fav labels and artists and my dashboard is my music inbox, just like email - check itregularly
3:18 PM it takes time to find the right people to follow and that's what's different, you actually have to invest some time to find the right people you're interested in
me: ok got ya. that's really cool.
3:19 PM as far as the financial side goes. what are your main costs associated with the business right now?
David: the main costs are staff & tech
tech as in infrastructure and servers etc
staff = payroll
3:20 PM we don't do marketing right now, the product is its own marketing in some way and word of mouth is doing a good job, we're about to hit 1 million users soon
*registered users, that doesn't take into account "fans" that only listen/stream
3:21 PM me: ok i see. is there a sort of virality to it? meaning that to use it you have to spread it?
David: the service is a freemium model, a free basic account and 4 tier premium accounts
3:22 PM me: ok i see. where is your funding coming from? mainly the premium accounts? or other sources as well?
3:23 PM David: we took on vc last year (€2.5m) from doughty hanson tech ventures in london and the premium accounts are almost covering our operational costs
3:24 PM we're beyond plan every month growing at 20%/month so the model proves to be working
3:25 PM virality: yes, the players are everywhere on the web and the waveform is a brand now on the web, you see it, you like it, you want it. then we make it easy to share via twitter and facebook
me: ok, got ya.
3:26 PM it sounds like you guys have a pretty good model going
David: thanks :)
haha as i said, we could go on all night
3:30 PM one thing maybe to mention is that we see soundcloud as a platform, offering accessible data via our API, developers can tap into it and create whole new services, just like with twitter
3:31 PM also worth mentioning is that we'll integrate with all important audio software producers to offer an easy and seamless way to push your productions to the web (your sc account) with one click, bypassing the desktop.
that I think covers the basic service as it is today, on a high-ish level
me: wow, that's really cool. you guys are coming up with some great ideas
3:32 PM David: yeah, it's exciting and a great product/team/company
me: ya sounds like it.
well thanks a lot, david