It’s been little over a month since we opened SoundCloud to the world. We’ve been so happy about the response & specifically about all your great comments & support–THANKS. Today we’re happy to announce our newly launched version of the Cloud, dubbed “Stevie” (after you know who) and share some updates. But first up, a little present:

Almost Half Price X-mas Discount on Yearly PRO Accounts!
We just launched our great value yearly PRO accounts and since holiday times are close we decided to do it with a huge X-mas discount (almost half price!). Grab it now and you get a full year of PRO Light for only €59 (€108), Pro Standard for just €199 (€348) or Pro Max for €399 (€708). We now also accept all major creditcards via PayPal.

Except for major things like the customizable DropBox there are a lot of behind the scenes fixes out in this release, and some nice user interface upgrades as well. Here, for example, is a Dashboard/DropBox user interface detail that some people have been wanting for some time now:

And last but not least, here’s Stevie working the talkbox:

This week we will join forces with Eric D. Clark and his labels to attend Worldtronics – Festival of Electronic Music that takes place in Berlin. During five days (wed-sun) Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt will be full of musicians, labels, music companies and hopefully a lot of electronic music heads. During the first two days we will have a stand together in the main hall showing how Eric uses SoundCloud to share and distribute his tracks on the web. So if you plan to come by please visit us as well, listen to some great music and pick up a few stickers.

This is very exciting news if you’re running a label for electronic music and want to sell your music on Digital-Tunes in a super-simple way.

Digital-Tunes is a really slick online store specializing in electronic music styles such as Dubstep, Minimal and Drum and Bass. As a label you can directly upload your releases for sale on the platform. And as of today, things got a whole lot easier as you can now import releases directly from SoundCloud to the shop with the click of a button. This means you can upload your releases to SoundCloud and, say, share them privately to DJ:s you respect or put the widget on your label page, and at the same time sell them on Digital-Tunes with almost no extra work. Simply enter your label and payment details over at Digital-Tunes and use the Import from SoundCloud feature to bring your tracks over. When they are approved by Digital-Tunes the Buy-link on SoundCloud even updates automatically to point to Digital-Tunes. Here’s a 2-minute screencast that shows you exactly how to do it:

SoundCloud: Digital-Tunes Shop Integration from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

As a pre-christmas present to everyone with a PRO Standard or Max account we’ve now made it possible to customize your DropBox page even more than before. Choose your favorite colors with the color picker and use it for the background, header text and body or just upload some nice images, it’s all up to you! This is great for syncing the DropBox page with the design of your label page or music blog. Check for example the great DropBoxes of Discobelle, Pentagonik, A Guy Called Gerald, Cornelia and IndieShows.

A How To guide and some inspiration can be found in the Customize your DropBox screencast:

SoundCloud: Customize your DropBox from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

Happy customization!

P.S. Would you like your music to be featured in future SoundCloud screencasts? Simply drop your track with a note in my DropBox.

You’re all going to have to pull a few late-nighters in the studio this month because those remix competitions are everywhere – quite literally! Hot on the heels of last week’s Jazzanova Remix Competition, we’re pleased to tell you about another opportunity to flex your remixing muscles. This time round the world’s largest online dance music retailer Juno has teamed up with London-based Cr2 Records to give you the chance to re-work John Dahlback’s massive electro-house single ‘Everywhere’.

The parts, including vocal, synths, guitar and vocal are nice and simple so we’ll be keeping a keen ear out for the most interesting interpretations which Cr2 will be posting up on their Cr2 Remixed page. The label will be picking 4 winners, one from each of the following genres: Electro, House/Tech, Techno, Drum & Bass. These will be released on the commercial digital release of ‘Everywhere’ in January 2009. And if this honour wasn’t enough, there’s also some great prizes up for grabs from ourselves, Ableton and Juno.

To enter you’ll need to get the parts from Juno Download, get creative and then submit your remix to the CR2 Remixed DropBox. You’ll find the full details here. And hurry, all entries must be in by December 14th.

We’re really excited to tell you that Jazzanova are doing a remix contest for their new single ‘I Can See’ on SoundCloud. We just had a listen through the parts and it really sounds like a fun remix project to work on. Ben Westbeech does a great job on the vocals and it seems one could do fun stuff with the piano backing track. The original tune is really good as well! Check and download the samples for yourself here:

To start working, just head over to the Jazzanova remix site, register with your email, download the parts and drop your mix in the DropBox. The Jazzanovas will then listen through and comment directly on your track! The deadline is January 15th.

A bunch of nice prizes (including Ableton Live licenses and SoundCloud PRO accounts…) are waiting for the lucky winners- and on top the chance of a digital release on Berlin-based label Sonar Kollektiv. The remixes will be presented on the Jazzanova website and Soundcloud. And the winner of the competition will be picked by the Jazzanovas themselves.

Oh, and here’s the video for ‘I Can See’:

UPDATE: The remix contest has been extended, the deadline is now 15th of January.

Speedy J (Jochem Paap) is doing an interesting project that we really like. It goes by the name of Open Collabs, and it’s a sort of über-collaborative album where Speedy J will take the stuff you send him and work it into new pieces consisting of many small fragments provided by the community and Mr. Paap himself. The finished album will be release on his label Electric Deluxe, and profits will be shared with all artists appearing on it 50/50. If you want your material to be on the album, you must submit your parts before December 1st. So head over to the Open Collabs site to register! You can then discuss the project directly with Jochem over at our forum. There’s also a FAQ if you need to know more specifics.
Here are some examples of what you could send:

What’s really cool is that the entire process of creating this album is supported by SoundCloud. Speedy J uses the DropBox for receiving parts, the player to display the works in progress and the API to visualize the process of creation…

Needless to say, we’re really looking forward to hearing what comes out of this!

Btw, if you check out the Open Collabs DropBox, you’ll notice that it looks really fresh. That’s because he’s using a new feature that we launched today for PRO Max and Medium accounts called “branded DropBox”. It gives you full control of the appearance of your DropBox. If you have a PRO Max or Medium account you can enable it here. More on this coming soon!

“Ain’t it funny how men think
They made the bomb, they are extinct
It’s only Saturday”

Yes, it’s Saturday and we conclude six days of sharing with some… sharing! There’s now a “Share” button in the top right corner of the player widget. Click it and you get the embed code of the player so that you can re-embed it somewhere else directly. So if we find a player here:

… we simply click “share” and paste it into our blog here:

Curious about the lyrics we’ve been quoting? Well, it’s the from the beautiful track Six days by Dj Shadow (video by Wong Kar-Wai), which in turn is a cover of the original 1971 track Six Day War by Colonel Bagshot (Lyrics discussed here)…