It’s time for yet an announcement for all you API lovers out there; a library making it really easy to implement SoundCloud streaming in your Cocoa apps. It’s built specially for the iPhone SDK 3.+ but should work for desktop Mac apps as well.

The library is a vital part of the SoundCloud iPhone app and will be used in the upcoming CitySound iPhone app as well. It’s written by Ullrich Schäfer and open source under the Apache License version 2.0.

To sum up, this library…

• makes it easy to implement the non trivial task of streaming audio in Cocoa apps
• nicely integrates with the existing Cocoa wrapper for the SoundCloud API
• supports streaming of public and OAuth protected tracks
• fits in commercial apps as well as music hack day mashups etc.

Head over to github and check out the source code along with the demo application.

Feedback, questions, and suggestions are welcome in the SoundCloud API Google group!

A lot of developers asked for it and now you can has it: programming level access to the SoundCloud Widget Player.

Via the new Widget API you can access functions like play and pause, show additional info about the currently playing track on your page or even hide our widget and create your own JavaScript based interface for it.

Check out this demo and some code examples. It only takes a few lines like:

soundcloud.addListener('onPlayerReady', function(player, data) {
  console.log("widget ready, let's play");
  player.api_play();
});

The Widget API also integrates nicely with the popular JavaScript frameworks jQuery and Prototype.

The source code is available at github together with the documentation.

We’re curious to hear what you think so please post feedback and feature requests in our Google group. You are also welcome to contribute to the project if you think there’s something missing.

You’ve probably discovered them by now and we’re super-excited about all the feedback you’ve given us so far:

Our two new widgets.

They’re called the Mini and Artwork player and come o top of the standard Waveform player that has been around for some time. We built these two new widgets based on your suggestions from the past couple of months.

To grab one of the players, find the track or set you would like to embed, click “Share” and “Customize Player”. This will open a panel in which you can select the player you want and also customize the general appearance and size to make it fit in nicely with the design of your artwork or website.

The Artwork Player focuses entirely on the image artwork you upload for with a track or set and comes with all usual info and additional options like download and buy links. Perfect for showcasing your album. Here’s Fever Ray’s latest self-titled album:

The Mini Player is quite the opposite and reduces the player to a single line of text (track or set title and your username). Clicking the Play button will reveal the waveform, only slightly smaller than usual:

Sexy, aren’t they? Check this out.

Both new players come with each of our Premium accounts.

Kudos to our kick-ass frontend duo Katharina and Matas for a job well done.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

Tuesday’s Taylor release revealed two new apps built by our friends Christian Stropp and Dorian Roy. The apps are built on top of the SoundCloud API and are very similar in terms of features – letting you upload audio to your SoundCloud account by simply dragging and dropping files onto the apps.

• Christian’s app is called CloudPost and works on Mac OS 10.5 or later.

• Dorian’s app is called Scup and works on both Windows and Mac OS but you need to have Adobe AIR installed.

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Note that these apps are not maintained by SoundCloud. Please send feedback and bug reports to Christian and Dorian. Also, CloudPost is open source if you want to contribute to the project.

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The first time you launch your desktop uploader you need to connect the app with your SoundCloud account.

Just click the button and you are automatically forwarded to SoundCloud where you can allow access to your account.

Note that the app is not storing your SoundCloud password. Instead it gets a temporary key that you can make unusable anytime by revoking the access on your account settings page. This is good if you for instance work temporarily on someone else’s computer.

Once the app is authorized you can start dragging files onto the drop window.

The files are uploaded automatically but set to private by default so no one can access them until you hit “Send Set”.

You can add information and drag artwork onto the image box. You can also add more tracks by dragging files onto the application.

If you make the set private you can enter email addresses to the people you want to share with.

When you are done with the settings, hit “Send Set” and the set ends up on your account page.

We think these apps are pretty cool and would like to thank Christian and Dorian for developing them! Try it out and let them (and us) know what you think.

Private sharing of your tracks and sets has always been a pretty easy thing to do on SoundCloud. I recently had the chance to speak with Aaron Albano (aka Ming), who as a producer based in NYC, has used these private sharing features during the production of one the new tracks by Aussie band Youth Group (make sure to check out this great video to see Ming talk about the experience). He loved the idea of the Secret Link and said it would definitely make things even easier.

With the Taylor release, we pushed a new feature called Secret Link. It really does what it says: upload a track or set, generate a secret link and simply pass it on via email or instant messenger. We think that will come in quite handy especially when sharing with people who are not on SoundCloud or not as tech-savvy as we all are. Here’s what it looks like:

And here’s how it works:

You’ll find the feature in your track or set settings. Simply check the box “Enable Secret Link” and don’t forget to save the settings at the bottom of the page to activate the link. Copy and paste this link and share it via email, instant messenger or make it a temporary exclusive to your followers on Twitter or Facebook.

To deactivate the Secret Link, click the circled arrow on the right and the link will be made redundant.

The Secret Link comes with all Premium accounts starting with new yearly account called ‘Lite’ for €29.

What do you think? Leave your feedback in the comments.

You were brave & patient, we released it yesterday:

The official SoundCloud iPhone app. Boom!

Being able to listen to and send your tracks from an iPhone app has been one of the things you requested most so we’re really excited that it’s finally here – and we hope you are too. We’ve teamed up with the fantastic iPhone app developing duo Gernot & Ullrich (who also share an office with us) to release Version 1.0 of the app. Here’s what it will let you do:

• Browse and listen to your own tracks or the tracks sent directly to you and your DropBox
• Favorite tracks
• Send tracks via email addresses from your local address book

So whenever you’re on the road or at gigs, meeting producers or folks interested in your tracks, the app allows you to send them your tracks straight from where you are. Commuting to and from work? Check out the latest tracks sent to you from the people you follow and from others and favorite them right in the app. Cool? We think so too.

The app comes for €0,79 or $0,99 and you will be directed to the app store by clicking this link. Go ahead and test it, rate it and leave feedback in the app store.  Also please come back here and post your feedback in the comments. We can’t wait to hear what you think, let us know and help shaping Version 2.0 of the app.

As I type this, the app currently ranks #2 in Ireland, #7 in Germany, #8 in the UK, #4 in The Netherlands, #6 in Sweden and #27 in the US (all in the category paid music apps). Let’s push it to the top so tweet it, blog it, spread the word.

Thanks so much!

… we just want to say that SoundCloud just pushed the best release of all time. The best release of all time!

Friends of the Cloud, we’re happy to announce the release of Taylor, named after Taylor Swift, who had a fun encounter with *the* Kanye. This was big news for both Taylor and Kanye and it’s major news for SoundCloud as it’s our biggest update ever.

We’ll be posting an ongoing series of blog posts with details about each new feature in the next few days and here’s a quick overview of what’s happening today. Click the links below to discover more on our fresh new product pages.

Two new player widgets: the Artwork and Mini player. Here’s the Artwork player with the Crooked Vultures song New Fang. Sexy, isn’t it – perfect for your album pre-releases.

Easier private sharing with the Secret Link: share a private url via email and IM

Stats-o-rama: completely revamped stats. Be in the know about the who, what, when, which and wheres around your tracks.

Bringing back the original metric of music: total minutes. SoundCloud becomes your tape in the cloud. Erase & rewind, upload & remove as many tracks as you want within your total amount of minutes. Click here to learn about the different minute packs.

Extended privacy options: disable comments, hide stats and make comments private.

Housekeeping: all PRO accounts are now known as Premium accounts. Check out the full lowdown.

Introducing the new Premium account called ‘Lite’, the perfect entry-level account that lets you dive straight into the premium features for only €29.

Cheaper Premium accounts: we just lowered the price of the yearly Solo, Pro and Pro Plus accounts (€79, €250, €500).

Scup and Cloudpost: two new little apps that let you upload straight from your desktop (note: both are beta).

Oh. One more thing: the iPhone app, it’s finally here. Get it in the app store for €0,79 or $0,99.

Cool? We think so too. Pretty much every new feature was developed based on the awesome feedback you have given us in the past months. We hope you like the new stuff we’ve been working on and please don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts in the comments.

FiRe, the popular iPhone field recorder app by our friends at Audiofile Engineering has been updated to version 1.3.0.

The new version adds features like input processing effects powered by iZotope, expanded metadata support, file encoding, and more. The SoundCloud integration has also been polished to make it even smoother to export your iPhone recordings to the cloud.

Check out all the new features and get FiRe 1.3.0 in the App Store.

Record anywhere and upload to SoundCloud straight from the app.

SoundCloud users and DJ/production duo Dirty Secretz just tweeted a link to their Facebook page where they managed to do a really nice integration between Facebook and SoundCloud that we’d like to share with you. This is the landing page of Dirty Secretz’ artist page on Facebook:

Clicking on “Check out our Tracks” will redirect you to the Tracks tab in the top menu where they have embedded their set. Also very nice, instead of simply choosing auto-play, they have a prominent button in the center that will start playing the tracks when clicking Play:

They’ve also done this for the Remix tab:

The best part: they’re sharing with us and you how they made it so you can go ahead and create something similar. For you tech-heads out there, install the Facebook Static FBML app, then follow the instructions posted here and add the link to the .swf from the embed code you want to add. If you need help, send them a shout via Twitter head over here to get the full instructions. Nice!

Thanks, guys! Very beautiful.

Most of you have probably noticed the recent slow- and downtimes we’ve experienced on the site lately. First of all: a huge and sincere Sorry to all of you from the entire team here at SoundCloud.

While putting the finishing touches to the couple of goodies we have lined up for you, we’ve clearly underestimated the growth that SoundCloud has seen in the past weeks and months. Until end of last week, we juggled between finishing the upcoming features and at the same time making sure that the site is up during peak times (usually starting around 9pm CET).

After numerous night shifts and quick fixes we figured that these fixes are not fully satisfactory. We’re going to prioritize the improvements on the performance side of things before we launch any new features to the site.

All developers are currently on different tasks to improve the general experience, but here’s a quick higher-level outline we wanted to share with you:

New database servers:

We’re waiting for the new servers to arrive and they should be with us soon. We’ll be making sure to have them installed and ready-to-go as quick as possible but in the meantime, we have several backup machines that should be fully functional in the next days.

Dashboard:

We’re planning some fixes that will hopefully make the Dashboard performance better, especially after logging in.

Database:

We will optimize the general writing & reading off the databases, especially everything related to mailboxes, comments, tracks and API calls that will make the site faster.

We promise to continue working hard and will do our best to improve the short-term performance to give you back the best experience when uploading your tracks & artwork, when seeing the waveform being created and when commenting on tracks. Also, it looks like we’ll be able to bring back the delete option on your Dashboard very very soon. We’ll update this post as soon as it happens and also post to Twitter.

Our goal clearly is to bring SoundCloud back on the fast lane and we have made it our priority to ensure that SoundCloud runs smoothly.

We’ve set up a status blog over at our friends at Tumblr where we started posting updates about the site status. Feel free to follow the blog if you’re a Tumblr user or subscribe to the RSS feed. Additionally, we will keep you posted on our Twitter account.

On that note: we’re still looking for a kick-ass system administrator whose thrill is to help us scale a rapidly growing community of music lovers. If you’re the champion we’re looking for, apply here.

Again, from everyone at the SoundCloud HQ, apologies for the lack of communication on this.

Update (04/11 – 5.23pm): The Dashboard delete buttons are back. Thanks for your patience.

Update (06/11 – 11.55am): Phew that was a hard one to crack but we discovered a misbehaving monitoring script that made an unusual amount of requests in very small intervals. Good news is that soon after resolving, we observed a significant increase and stabilization of the site performance. The new databases have arrived and mostly installed and the fixes & improvements of the last days have also helped.