SoundCloud: A German Startup Case Study
In 2007, founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss started SoundCloud to fufill their need for a simple music-sharing platform. Inspired by other simplified media companies such as twitter, vimeo, and flickr- they felt that music had been left out of this innovative shift towards technology-assisted collaboration. As co-founder Alex Ljung explains, “it was just really, really annoying for us to collaborate with people on music — I mean simple collaboration, just sending tracks to other people in a private setting, getting some feedback from them, and having a conversation about that piece of music.”(Van Buskirk). With this idea, they set out to create a space where people could share music and receive feedback in a way not offered by current music sharing sites. Now a worldwide company with offices in Berlin, San Francisco, New York, London, and Sofia they have over 10 million registered users, with countless more directed to their site everyday (SoundCloud). Moving beyond music file sharing, the company now has a mobile application and several levels of profile options, from a free user to a professional artist. With constant updates and a sleek design, SoundCloud has truly become one of the best website to upload, share, and explore music.
SoundCloud Revolutionizes Music Sharing
Ljung and Wahlforss were not the first people to start a music sharing website, or be successful starting one, but they have proved to build upon past companies in revolutionary ways. SoundCloud was founded in 2007 and became increasingly popular around 2009 (Robedhmed). Ten years earlier in 1999, Napster became one of the first websites to design a peer-to-peer music file-sharing platform, with a...
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It is important to make sure you work with a company that knows the various ways your music can become everything you want it to and with Lloud, you can be sure that they are a company with that knowledge. With high quality tools, equipment, and a large range of networking contacts, they will showcase your music in a way that will leave you feeling proud and excited. Your music becomes their project and your success is their
Majerol, Ueronica. “How the Web Changed Music Forever.” New York Times Upfront 145.11 (2013):21. MasterFILE Complete, Web 24 Feb. 2014
hotbeds for sharing of online music files by a variety of methods for many years. All
File-sharing became big right around the time the Napster file-sharing program came out. Napster is an online service which was invented by an 18-year-old college student that allows a user to see song files residing on the hard drives of other users, and to download copies of any of those songs. (DLC.org) Napster started off at a slow pace, becoming popular at colleges and then it just exploded. Everyone was using this program within a year of its creation. (DLC.org) However, it eventually got busted and the idea of free music was shutdown, or so the music industry thought. Napster continues to be around today, but with a legal persona. After Napster was told to stop there illegal program there were many other programs in the making. Programs even more advanced then Napster.
Earlier this year (DATE???) alt-rockers Cake topped the Billboard 200 chart with their first album in seven (???) years, Showroom of Compassion. The album sold 44,000 copies the first week of its release, a record low for the number one hit. At the same time, Britney Spears' single “Hold It Against Me” scaled the digital song chart with 411,000 copies sold. The two charts illustrate the change in the way we listen to music. The Internet—as it did for almost everything—has radically affected the way people get music.
Pfanner, Eric. "Music Industry Sales Rise, and Digital Revenue Gets the Credit." Business Day Technology. The Nre York Times, 26 Feb 2013. Web. 21 Mar 2014.
Spotify’s Time. (n.d.). Music Business Journal Berklee College of Music RSS. Retrieved May 21, 2014, from http://www.thembj.org/2014/05/spotifys-time/
Before the 1990’s, if people want to listen to music, they just visit a music store and pick up a CD and then put it into a stereo equipment. However, the development of MP3 file format gradually changed the way people listen to music. This format lets everyone download music easily and it can be converted to CD as well. But, there is still a problem: searching MP3 files on the internet is maddening and people seldom can find the music they want. Therefore, the birth of Napster solved this problem, creating a virtual music community in which music fans could use the Web as a “swap meet” for music files. More importantly, Napster is easy to use and it’s free, which expands the range of audience in age. Bandwidth also contributed to Napster’s success. The greater the bandwidth, the faster the file can be transferred. So, Napster really changed the way people listen to music, discover music and interact with music.
The most significant down side to technology is the loss in revenue from album sales. Illegal downloading of music has become prevalent in today’s society, and many artists—major or independent—receive little to no profit from album sales. Many companies, such as Apple, have tried combating the issue with protected file formats, but a loophole has always been found to bypass the protection. Unsigned and independently signed artists hurt the most, as they pay almost everything out-of-pocket to produce their music. The only feasible response to the loss in revenue, artists have found, is to increase tour dates. In today’s age, it is not rare to find artists who tour more than eight months out of each year. Touring has become one of, if not the only, reliable source of income for many
In the past, music has been a costly business, where only people with a lot of money could enter and be successful in the industry. Changes in the music industry coupled with new computer technology have made it much easier for people without a lot of money to compose, produce, and distribute their creation. In order to get a better understanding of the music industry in comparison to 2014, one has to look at its history. There were many things that happened from the 1980’s onward, and they brought on a significant impact towards the music industry. Development in computer technology has also made a big impression on music. Many things within these fields have enabled artists to connect with their fans in a way they couldn’t before, and on a lower budget. In this paper, the discussion will be about all of these topics, and about the factors that help transform the music industry into something altogether easier for new people to contribute.
Social media is shaping the music industry and is needed to spread the word and engage with listeners. With the amount of listeners joining so...
The story really begins with Napster and its free software that allowed users to swap music across the Internet for free using peer-to-peer networks. While Shawn Fanning was attending Northeastern University in Boston, he wanted an easier method of finding music than by searching IRC or Lycos. John Fanning of Hull, Massachusetts, who is Shawn's uncle, struck an agreement which gave Shawn 30% control of the company, with the rest going to his uncle. Napster began to build an office and executive team in San Mateo, California, in September of 1999. Napster was the first of the massively popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems, although it was not fully peer-to-peer since it used central servers to maintain lists of connected systems and the files they provideddirectories, effectivelywhile actual transactions were conducted directly between machines. Although there were already media which facilitated the sharing of files across the Internet, such as IRC, Hotline, and USENET, Napster specialized exclusively in music in the form of MP3 files and presented a user-friendly interface. The result was a system whose popularity generated an enormous selection of music to download. Napster became the launching pad for the explosive growth of the MP3 format and the proliferation of unlicensed copyrights.
"The mass production of free, high-quality re-recorded music became a serious threat to the music industry" ("Music Industry"). This mass production is costing artists and producers money that they would have made from people buying their music. Listeners have turned to streaming services as a cheaper alternative to purchasing to songs they love. Streaming services have increased the availability of music, which one may think is a good thing but is in fact a fulmination to the music industry because artists are not making as much money as they would have if songs were being purchased individually. People who worked in the music industry had showered praise on to streaming services, considering them a savior that would help the music industry and increase revenue, but they instead had an adverse effect on music sales and artist salary (O’Brien). Streaming services have led to protests from artists on many different levels due to the amount of payment that artists are receiving. "Prince, Neil Young and Ms. Swift have withdrawn their music from some streaming outlets, and various musicians have called for greater transparency in how the music industry operates (Sisario).” While the protests have been successful, it is only when famous high-level artists bring attention to the issues. This controversy is one of the negatives of streaming services because
Social Media influences what music we listen to. In the past people used to listen to songs that had meaning behind them, and it was because they personally enjoyed the music. For example “ Go back in time a few decades, to the 60s, 70s, and 80s… Many of the bands of the past wrote music that had real depth to it. Their lyrics were meaningful.”- states GiannaA. In today’s society
The music industry started in the mid 18th century with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Through the decades there has been a great increase in this industry; however, the revenues for this industry have declined by half in the last 10 years. This has been caused by music piracy, which “is the copying and distributing of copies of a piece of music for which the composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company did not give consent” . After 1980’s, when the Internet was released to public, people started to develop programs and websites in which they could share music, videos, and information with...