We’re really happy that SoundCloud has been nominated as best site in the “Services & Applications” category of the 2009 Webby Awards (which is sort of like the academy awards for web sites)! There are actually two different prizes for this category–the Jury’s pick and the People’s Voice. And for the people’s Voice prize, you can help us! Just follow these instructions–and please do it today as this is the last day of voting!

1. Sign up here
2. Pick SoundCloud from “Select a Nominee” at the top of the page
3. Tell your friends to vote for us! And please do comment on the nominee page!

Big thanks!

UPDATE: Voting is now closed, thanks a lot for your help!

We’re super excited to announce FiRe, an iPhone application by Audiofile Engineering that turns your iPhone into a professional field recorder! Now the greatest thing about FiRe (we think) is that you can upload your recorded sounds straight to SoundCloud from your iPhone (using our open API). Simply tap the “Upload to My Account” button after you’re done recording, and the sound will be on its way to the cloud. That’s pretty neat!

Aside from the awesome SoundCloud integration, FiRe is packed with pro audio recording features. Location tagging, overdubbing, waveform editing, and Broadcast WAVE metadata make FiRe a powerful tool for journalists and musicians.

FiRe also supports stereo recording with external microphones such as the BLUE Mikey and Alesis ProTrack. If the internal mic is used for mono recordings, then the screen rotates 180 degrees, allowing users to best position the device for optimum directional pickup. Users can scroll the live waveform display with the touch of a finger or navigate it with a system of configurable double-taps.

To run FiRe you’ll need an iPhone 3G, iPod Touch (second generation) or a first Generation iPhone with the headset plugged in. Read more over at CNET or Create Digital Music.

Since we opened Soundcloud to the public in October last year it’s been quite a storm! Loads of hard work for a small team but at the same time so much fun! It’s been incredibly encouraging with all the new users, all the great feedback, the new API projects and of course, all the great music. Thanks a lot!

Today, we’re making an exciting announcement. We’ve taking on a round of new financing from the investment company Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures to help us grow Soundcloud even further. This means lots of good things but primarily it will allow us to build more of those features you’ve been requesting a lot faster. It also means we’ll be able to work together with other companies and labels on some very exciting projects! We’re not changing the direction, existing features or intentions of SoundCloud. What we are are looking to do though is exactly what we already do, but more and faster!

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people missing the ability to get direct notifications when tracks are dropped in your DropBox, so we’ve now added an option for this in the email settings. The default is set to “Right Away” for the notifications, so next time somebody drops a track for you, you’ll get an email about it. You can of course change this–or turn it off–at any time. The digest emails have also been updated to show exactly which tracks where dropped, so you can click through to the tracks directly. Check below for a screenshot:

Fine Art have opened up a remix competition for Yalla Yalla by Sheharzad. Having been remixed by panOptikum and Henrik Schwarz this is a great opportunity to give the original your own edge. Prizes include a release on Fine Art and a SoundCloud PRO account.

Deadline is 1st of June, submissions will need to be made via the dropbox and there are no genre restrictions whatsoever, so let’s get crackin’.

The Hype Machine just launched a great new weekly radio show featuring music that’s been hyped in the blogosphere recently. And we’re glad that they are using SoundCloud to host it! Check it out on hypem.com/radio or listen directly through the widget:

And you can follow The Hype Machine on SoundCloud here!