On Twitter: RT @haynes_dave Haven't enjoyed the NYC subway so far, but loved the guy who spotted my sweater and shouted 'yeah, SoundCloud rocks!!' 1 day ago
We’re still a bit high off the crazy SoundCloud party we had 2 weeks ago… What a day: 25 artists (thanks again!), 14 hours, 800 Beers, 2 visits by the Police and of course a great mix of people!
Somehow, we all feel that a party as mad as this one (where everyone had fun without any problems) could only have happened in Berlin. Therefore we’d like to dedicate this new release to one of the city’s main cultural icon: Ellen Allien.
Photo by Michael Mann
While the queen of Techno has just released her fourth album, the SoundCloud HQ has been busy working on its most symbolic improvement: moving the platform from private beta version into slightly less private beta . So sure, we have a lot of things to do (not to mention turning our office back into a suitable working space after the party) but we still managed to add a bunch of really nice improvements for “Ellen”. And it goes a ‘lil sumthin’ like this:
Uploading of artwork for each track (artwork for sets coming soon!)
ID3-tags implementation for 128 kbps version of songs: people downloading your song will see all its info (bpm/artwork/artist/label/genre).
User names can now contain spaces, capital letters and all types of characters (So listen up Fabio, you can now be “Fabio Genito” instead of “fabiogenito”).
No more “spam” tracks: people who aren’t in your contact list will not be able to send you “private tracks”. Instead the songs will appear in a new section of the dashboard named “Dropbox”. This helps you to differentiate between the tracks from your contacts and those from strangers.
Faster uploading of music, and it’s now also quicker to share music to all your contacts via the “select all” button.
Better “timed comment” design and improved GUI in the “sharing” section.
It all started at the end of 2007, probably after another mad night out in Berlin: what if we would be able to turn the SoundCloud office into a club?
The idea was nurtured for a few months, some research was made (where to get the drinks? How late could we do before the police comes?), but we felt we needed an “excuse” to throw a party and turn our office upside down…
Then it all dawned upon us a month ago: SoundCloud will soon be open to the public (at least you’ll be able to listen to tracks that are public if you’re not a member) so why not organize a party to celebrate that? Since the weather was getting warm, we thought it was a killer idea to have the party on the Terrace of the office with a back-to-back showcase session of sorts.
So we began working on the event, making the craziest line-up on the planet (25 acts in 14 hours!), booking flights for artists outside of Germany, finding accommodations, getting drinks and food…basically learning in a few days how to organize a one-day festival on a terrace in Berlin Mitte.
It was hard work (we got no more love for the suckers at Robben & Wientjes by the way) but on sunday the 11th of may at 14.00, we finally managed to open our office doors (actually took them off the hinges) to let people in and start enjoying our first SoundCloud party!
I was still busy checking out the Soundsystem so I didn’t have time to Dj as Quarion, but everything was ready for Der Klaus to hit the Wheels Of Steel (via Traktor) with his impeccable Deep House selection. 30 mins later and Andre Lodemann was on, dropping House gem after House gem as the sun was blazing and the Terrace was filling up…
It was already 16.00 when Top Berlin promoter Daniel Best introduced avant-garde Techno act Cloud who blessed us with a world premiere airing of his next release. As people started getting their drinks and chilling on the roof, it was time for vinyl addict Hauke Freer to play a great House set, followed half an hour later by Michelle Owen who spinned a top notch selection of minimal groovy house.
The terrace and roof were getting more and more crowded when Snax hit the stage at 17.30. As the first live act of the day, he totally turned the place out with his amazing performance and people were definitely on a party mode when Exit Ghost started playing a tasteful selection of disco and house.
But then our worst fear suddenly materialized as people from the “Polizei” made their appearance: they stopped the music and threatened to shut down the party!
But as it turned out the Police was mostly concerned about the people hanging out on the roof, so they agreed to let us continue partying as long as we moved the sound system inside our office and restrained our friends to climb up on the roof…phew!
Unfortunately, it took us some time to move all the equipment inside and the music schedule was getting seriously delayed as DJ Humus stepped behind the decks and blessed us with a proper House selection. It also took a while for people to move on the dancefloor because the weather was just too good to be inside…
But the place was slowly getting packed as the sun was setting down and Dirk Rumpff was playing awesome music. Hunee definitely had the dancefloor grooving to his intense disco set when Eric introduced Cornelia and her lovely Electro hip-Hop Popsongs. Her show captivated the audience and most of the people were now in the office, grooving to the beat, having fun, eating sandwiches and drinking warm beer (the fridge was opened too often to cool the drinks down).
Trickski stepped up 30 minutes later to play a fresh and bouncy House set, quickly followed by a top notch minimal house selection by Noema. It was then time for Jack Migger to perform his rock-oriented material to a mesmerized crowd and the mic was still hot when Little Jinder presented her sweet and sour electropop songs.
Just as the bar was running out of alcoholic drinks (which forced Eric and Alex to make multiple emergency excursions to the nearest 24/7 shop that night), Kalle Kuts exploded the dancefloor with a skillful Boogie, Funk and Disco set. The SoundCloud office was beginning to heat up as the crowd let loose to Le Choix’s punchy Techno live act.
It now seemed as the party would never end and the situation was getting a bit out of hand: more and more people managed to sneak on the roof so we were all hoping that our partycrashers friends at the Polizei would not pay us another visit…
But the party was going strong nevertheless, thanks to a blinding set by Techno artist Mesak and a soulful mix by jazzy house Maestro Fabio Genito. It was around two in the morning when the Bookhouse Boys dropped a great live performance but sadly, the delay between acts was now so big that Barbara Hallama and Ben Mono were running late for other duties and had to cancel their performances.
The crowd was also starting to leave as Booty bass heroes Yeah Fool! attacked the decks with their uncompromixing blend of electro, Baile Funk and mash-ups.
Then, just as the SoundCloud DJ team was about to start, the police made a second (and final) appearance, strongly advising us to stop the music if we didn’t want to have our soundsystem confiscated. The party was dying out anyway so we figured we would stop everything now and not get into more trouble…
The last people left our office calmly as we began to close our office down: a lot of cleaning work was waiting for us the next day because our office looked totally trashed out!
But it was all worth it as we all felt we had the party of the year! How to top this? And what a fantastic crowd too! Big thanks to all of you for coming by!
for a while now SoundCloud has been growing steadily as a private beta version accessible only to a lucky few… After months of hunting bugs, listening to the requests of our beloved users and tweaking the site into perfection, we feel SoundCloud is ready for the next step. Pretty soon we’ll be opening the site up a little bit for more users (invite’s will still be required for accounts) and this calls for a release-party!
To celebrate this special event, we’d like to invite you to storm the top floor & roof-top of the Postfuhramt and turn it into a crazy dancefloor on Sunday the 11th of May from brunch-time (2pm) until late!
Since music is what we love, we managed to get a pretty insane list of DJ’s, musicians, performers and all-round music nutters to rock with you. Expect everything from deep house to bass-filled dubstep to garage rock to electro-pop and beyond. Come over and check out performances from over 20 (!) acts throughout the day & night!
We’re starting at 2pm with a rooftop brunch and will be supplying food and drinks all through the day/night/morning. So, we’d love you to join us to check out the sun & great music from the roof of the classic Postfuhramt building.
We’re all looking forward parting with you on Sunday!
What: Release-party / brunch with over 20 DJs, musicians & performers
Yanneck
There’s something in the Cloud… Comments
Photo by Michael Mann
. So sure, we have a lot of things to do (not to mention turning our office back into a suitable working space after the party) but we still managed to add a bunch of really nice improvements for “Ellen”. And it goes a ‘lil sumthin’ like this:
for a while now SoundCloud has been growing steadily as a private beta version accessible only to a lucky few… After months of hunting bugs, listening to the requests of our beloved users and tweaking the site into perfection, we feel SoundCloud is ready for the next step. Pretty soon we’ll be opening the site up a little bit for more users (invite’s will still be required for accounts) and this calls for a release-party!