Just announced…and rather exciting!

SAN FRANCISCO, California – May 9, 2012 – SoundCloud, the world’s leading social sound platform, announced today a complete redesign that will be available immediately via private beta invites and phased rollouts to its community over the upcoming months. The Next SoundCloud will make it as easy to create and share sound as it already is for photos, videos and text.

“Over the past few years we’ve been championing the need to unmute the web and have signed up over 15 million sound creators in the process,” said Alexander Ljung, founder & CEO. “Today we are pushing further towards that goal by launching a private beta of the Next SoundCloud, which delivers a simpler, faster, more social sound platform to help everyone appreciate sound more.”

“Next SoundCloud has been re-engineered from the inside out,” said Eric Wahlforss, founder & CTO. “It’s much more than an aesthetic change. By making use of state of the art technologies available in the latest generation browsers, we’ve created a technology platform that enables us to provide a much better user experience and develop new features faster.”

Notable features included in the private beta launch:

See more

A more interactive waveform player: The next SoundCloud Waveform puts your sounds at the forefront. More visible, more interactive, and no more comment clutter. Read replies with a single scroll too.

Profiles redesigned with you in mind: Simpler, more attractive profiles bring the best things into view: sounds, sets, reposts and profile images. Likes and comments are more visible. See which of your friends are following people you find.

Share more

New reposts to share what you hear: Share your sounds even further. New reposts let your friends, fans and followers repost your sounds for others to hear. And sets can be reposted in just the same way.

Real-time updates from your friends: Keep up-to-date the second something happens with real-time notifications. When someone likes or reposts your sounds, you’ll see right away. Other people can see your activity too.

Hear more

Play sounds continuously: Press play and just keep listening. Explore the next SoundCloud while continuing to play sounds from your Stream. Hit the Waveform icon to return to the sound you’re hearing.

Build sets of music and audio you like: Forget playlists. Sets let you build collections of the sounds you create and like in one Waveform. Share your sets with people, and like and repost other people’s sets too.

Find more

Easier than ever to navigate: The next SoundCloud is even more intuitive. A simplified About section includes only the links you need. Notifications keep you informed. Keyboard shortcuts and volume control make life easier.

New search with faster, better results: Find new sounds faster with improved search. Search suggestions appear as soon as you type. Improved search algorithms deliver more relevant results faster.

SoundCloud will offer tens of thousands of invites during this private beta, and a public beta is expected in the coming months. Full switchover will be executed by the end of this year. SoundCloud users will still be able to take advantage of existing features in the current version, such as upload and record, and new features will be added during the private beta period.

For additional information on the Next.SoundCloud or to sign up for a private beta invite, please visit: next.soundcloud.com

When I found out that the guys behind online DAW Soundation were working with Amnesty International to create a song contest for their 50th anniversary I fired a quick email over to their CEO Bil Bryant to find out more, here’s what he had to say…

‘On May 3rd, Amnesty International is celebrated its 50^th  anniversary by releasing a song with 50 artists and to continue to illuminate interest on the work the organization is doing. The Berlin based PR firm working with Amnesty International on this, Creative Construction, contacted us about using Soundation Studio for a song contest. We are currently making a few system changes specific to  this contest, our small contribution to support the wonderful work Amnesty International has and is doing.

Contest users will have an instrumental backing track of the song, including the background vocals singing the refrain, and will be able to sing and record themselves online, save and post the submission into a specific leaderboard where people can listen and “like” the contestants version. The number of likes with determine 20 finalists which a winner will then be chosen by the Art for Amnesty panel. The receives studio time and there are a variety of prizes.

It is an awesome concept to just go online – sing to a backing track, with a headset – and then have a listening and voting structure direct upon export. Very exciting stuff. The song was recorded in Levon Helm´s Studio outside Woodstock, New York and it is the last recording Levon was involved in as he passed 2 weeks ago. Levon Helm was a the drummer/singer in The Band.’

You can sign up to find out more about the contest, which launches in a few weeks on the ‘Toast to Freedom’ here

Useful development for radio stations here – online music distribution meets social based requesting….

New York, NY, April 18, 2012 - BreakTheCrates.com, an online music distribution network that connects record labels to radio stations, announced today that it had formed a partnership with LikeIt.fm, a platform that empowers music fans to make radio requests online via Facebook & Twitter.

Through this partnership, BreakTheCrates.com will help mixshow DJs easily find and play new music that fans request to radio on social networks using LikeIt.fm technology. Artists using LikeIt.fm will be able to leverage data from BreakTheCrates.com to monitor the success of their radio singles nationwide. Over time, the partnership holds considerable potential to enhance radio technology through the development of new engagement tools for labels, artists, radio stations, DJs and fans.

BreakTheCrates.com currently distributes music to over 750 radio stations nationwide, including 92 of the top 100 markets. The service is regularly used by the top names in radio including DJ Skee (KIIS, Sirius XM), Felli Fel (KPWR), DJ Pup Dawg (WJMN), Jermaine Dupri (So So Def), Nick Cannon (CBS Radio), R Dub! (Slow James, Syndicated), and TV/ radio personality, Big Tigger.

“In the past, new music was sent to radio stations on CD singles, and an employee was tasked with adding each song to a radio console,” explains BreakTheCrates.com founder, Brandon Kreiss. “This was a painstaking process and many quality singles went unnoticed. Today, mixshow DJs use BreakTheCrates.com to preview, download, and play new music on the fly. And by leveraging web data, BreakTheCrates.com helps labels track which stations have downloaded their records and how many times their records have been played. DJs save time, record labels save money; it’s a win-win proposition.”

LikeIt.fm provides cross-platform content access for fans and positive action for singles. It streamlines the fan engagement and mobilization process for musicians, eliminating scattered calls-to-action, and helping to drive radio requests. Once on a LikeIt.fm banner ad, page, artist widget or Facebook brand page, each and every click helps the artist’s buzz metric. LikeIt.fm reports to and directly affects the Ultimate Chart. The analytic backend provides artist management, labels, and radio stations unparalleled insight into an artist’s digital performance in real time. Clients include Ke$ha, Drake, Joe Jonas, Kanye West, Willow Smith, Mike Posner and Lil Wayne.

“Our goal in partnering with BreakTheCrates.com is to streamline the promotional process for artists, labels, and radio stations,” says LikeIt.fm EVP Spencer Sherman. “The tools we provide allow artists to really tap into their social network followings with a clear call to action for radio requests. BreakTheCrates.com helps artists get their music to radio, LikeIt.fm helps artists engage and activate their fans to request the music on radio.” DJs, radio stations, artists, and record labels can all monitor these requests and engage their fans and listeners in real time.

BreakTheCrates.com was founded in 2007 by Brandon Kreiss and Ryan Dillon. LikeIt.FM was founded in 2010 by Brand Knew and Daniel Weisman. Both companies currently have offices in New York and Los Angeles. For further information, visit www.BreakTheCrates.com or www.LikeIt.fm.

Those of you that know this blog will know I’m a big fan of music startups and so its hardly surprise that when I discovered a decent one here in my hometown of Manchester, UK I was keen to cover it.

Crowd.FM is a web based tools for managing music events and a pretty decent one at that – read about it in my article for The Next Web here

This is awesome and huge kudos to developers Plan8 and 14islands for creating it too…

It’s essentially an online music game controlled by your mobile via the web – very basic at the moment but its apparently a prototype for something bigger that’s planned this year, they’re currently describing it as a ‘a test of some of the features we’re are working on for an upcoming interactive music experience’

I think you’ll agree that this kind of technology has massive potential, especially for web based music platforms.

Check it out here

This is pretty cool….Beatonica, a web based rhythm box that makes use of Twitter avatars or as its creators call it ‘A future instrument created by human connection’

To play you need to login with a Twitter account, then a sound is randomly chosen from a 1000+ sound collection and each keypad is also connected to your Twitter friends who have their own sounds. The app then lets you create a track from these sounds and also generates a track for you.

Sound good? Then go have a play with it now at http://beatonica.com/

Great to see browser based sequencer Audiotool get a new update which adds a superb synth, some useful FX and other new features such as presets and the ability to import from the ‘Sketch’ Android app.

Here’s the full list of new features…

• Heisenberg PM synthesiser
• Autofilter
• Exciter
• Graphical EQ
• Stereo Enhancer
• Device presets
• Open drafts directly from app
• Right click (only with Flash player version 11.2 or above)
• Improved sample search
• Sketch export to Audiotool

It was pretty much inevitable that Berlin based music companies Ableton and SoundCloud would eventually work together and, as you’d expect the result it pretty awesome too.

First off all, Ableton now allows direct upload to SoundCloud – an incredibly useful feature when you consider how widespread usage of that particular audio sharing platform is now.In addition to this Ableton users also get a 5 month subscription to SoundCloud’s Pro service for free too – which certainly sweetens the pot somewhat

Ableton is also offering the SoundCloud community a free version of Ableton Live Light 8, should they want to have a play around on it and are promising competitions for SC users in the near future featuring the likes of M83 and Imogen Heap.

More about this on the SoundCloud blog here 

Yet another addition to online music sequencer Audiosauna was announced today – a vintage tape delay which should certainly add an interesting dimension to tracks made with it.

The effect has the following features…

• Controls for delay time, feedback, damage and level.
• Accurate tape delay emulation.
• Smooth tape-like delay time changes, just like in the vintage models.
• Tempo sync option.
• Classic unpredictable self-oscillation at extreme damage settings.
• Works also as a clean digital delay.

Find out more and have a listen to some audio demos on the Audiosauna blog here