Here’s a quick one that will come in handy for track titles that are a little longer than usually. Until now, the permalink of your track got automatically generated from the track title. That changes today with the new little feature that lets you edit the permalinks of your tracks. You’re able to do that directly on the upload page and also later in your track settings.

The two nice little screen grabs below will help you find it.

Here’s the upload page:

And here’s how it looks in your track settings (also works for tracks you have already uploaded) – don’t forget to save:

One important note: if you change the permalinks of existing tracks, please note that this will also affect links & widgets you’ve posted across the web. Please update these accordingly.

Have an awesome weekend, everyone!

We spoke to DJ and producer Mr Henry Von, who together with Fergie runs the Excentric Muzik and Rekluse labels and asked him how SoundCloud has helped them get their musical message across…

So what’s the main reason you guys use Soundcloud and for what purpose?

In a nut shell, I guess the main use of SoundCloud for us is to help promote and share our releases on our two labels Excentric Muzik and Rekluse.

We use SoundCloud probably just in the same conventional way that most of its users do like uploading our music to the page and sharing it with others, but I am a massive fan just because of the fact that it is so good at doing this stuff. I have recently realised that it has now become almost central to all our online promotional operations.

We have 4 SoundCloud accounts, 2 for our labels and 2 DJ ones for myself and Fergie. No longer do I have to upload to all these different file sharing places, ending up with a lot of unrecognisable links. Now I just upload all the mixes and tracks to SoundCloud and then via the ’sharing’ options spread the music around all our other web sites like Myspace and Facebook. We realise that some of the people who like our music prefer different sites to others, some people purely like to discover new music through SoundCloud on it’s own, but what SoundCloud allows us to do is to spread the word across the sites very easily.

And as a bi-product of this we get to see how many people have actually listened and liked the stuff! On the Facebook pages in particular we do seem to get a much better response from posting the SoundCloud player than we do from just posting the direct link to Beatport. And it is also really useful for receiving label demos as it takes out the whole emailing and downloading process which can be very time consuming when you have 100+ demos to listen to.

SoundCloud is really impressive and has become a key component of our web presence. I now plan to see how far we can go with SoundCloud and just try to get the most out of it really.

For those out there who haven’t come across you yet, tell us a little bit about of what you do…

I’ll start with the labels: Excentric Muzik is Fergie’s own label that was originally started by him as an outlay for his own productions. Rekluse is a joint venture by myself and Fergie, with a focus more on releasing other like-minded artists work. You may have heard of Fergie through his time as a BBC Radio 1 presenter, he hosted a weekly underground electronic music show on the station for 5 years although he left the station about 3 years ago and since then has been concentrating on making his own music, which he has had a lot of success with. (For more info on him his biog at www.excentric-fergie.com has a lot more details).

I also DJ and make music but I am also responsible for most of the day to day goings on of both labels and so I am the one who looks after the SoundCloud pages (you can find out a little bit more about me at www.myspace.com/mrhenryvon).

How would you describe your and your label’s sound and style?

The music we release on both labels is normally always big-room peak-time kind of cuts, of the tech house / techno variety, big exciting electronic tunes basically. I guess most of the music kind of sits in the gap between underground and commerical dance music, DJs like Carl Cox, Richie Hawtin, Dubfire, John Digweed, Sasha, Hell, Slam and Misstress Barbara have given us a lot of support. There’s so many great labels releasing a lot of great music at the moment so we’re just concentrating on one part of it, we do play some deeper and housier stuff in our sets though now and again.

For fans of the genre what have been your most successful releases to date that they will remember and what have you got in store?

Excentric Muzik’s most successful releases so far that you may have heard of have been Anon, Blackeye-P and Maktub, all from Ferg. We also did a big remix package at the start of the year featuring quite a few different remixers all taking on Ferg’s originals, artists such as Pig & Dan, Umek, Reset Robot and Alan Fitzpatrick, which went down really well. Recently we just released a brilliant new collaboration between Christian Smith & Reset Robot, called Elixir, with remixes from myself and also Gary Beck. And up next is a new solo effort from Fergie, Ragaroo.

The two releases people are most likely to have heard on Rekluse would have to be “Umek – 2nd To None”, our first release, which hit the number 1 spot in the Beatport techno charts and was still floating about in the top 100 6 months later. Was a really good track and we will be working with Umek next year on a follow up. Also “Loco & Jam – Medusa” has been massive one for us, with everyone from King Unique to the Japanese Popstars to Paul Woolford giving it a good hammering. Coming up we have releases from Alex D’Elia & Nihil Young, Matt Cooper, Electric Rescue, we are also currently working on an exciting singles compilation due out at the end of the year to celebrate our 1st birthday. This will be accompanied by a sampler of the release mixed by myself that will be available to download for free via the Rekluse Soundcloud page.

And of course listeners will be able to hear the new releases before they are released via the SoundCloud page! (always great to read people’s feedback and comments about the tracks).

Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions, guys!

We’re pleased to say that SoundCloud will be in Manchester for In The City this year. I’ll be taking part in a panel on Monday called “New Digital Weaponry” whilst Alex will be there on Tuesday as part of the Tribes, Fans & Followers session with our friends Ian Hogarth (Songkick), Sean Adams (Drowned In Sound), Anthony Volodkin (Hype Machine).

There’s also a whole load of amazing bands (over 150 in fact!) descending upon the city from the 18th – 20th October as part of the event. And the super-friendly chaps who are working hard to organise ITC have kindly offered two pairs of wristbands for us to give away to fans of SoundCloud.

To be one of the two winners couldn’t be simpler. Send us a tweet to @SoundCloud telling us why you think you should win the wristabands. We’ll pick our favourite two by 4pm today (GMT, Friday 16th). For more details of what you’ll win check here.

If you’re into hacking, music and Amsterdam, this one’s for you. Our friends Edial & Roel who just recently relocated to Berlin are co-organizing the Music & Bits conference in Amsterdam on Wednesday, October 21st. Pre-conference to the Amsterdam Dance Event, Music & Bits is merging music & technology and will also be the forum for the next Music Hack Day.

The program looks great and the list of speakers that will participate in both the conference and the Music Hack Day sounds exciting: Anthony of the Hype Machine, Matthew from Last.fm, Brian from The Echo Nest, Andie from RjDj and Dave & Eric from team SoundCloud will be joined by hackers from all across Europe to prototype awesome new projects on top of the companies API’s in just one day.

The event is free, if you haven’t registered yet and want to do so, click here.

Here’s a quick one for you with some exciting news and the kind request to help a fellow SoundCloud user. Leon Somov from Lithuania has just won the MTV Best Baltic Act Award for his collaboration with Jazzu. They both need your vote to make it to the European Best Act Award so let’s help ‘em out:

Voting literally takes a second and is possible until November 2nd:

Voting for Best European Act starts today and will run until 2 November when the top 5 acts with the most votes will be revealed. The ultimate winner of Best European Act will be announced live on the show on 5th November.

Let’s join forces and help getting a SoundClouder onto the big stage. By the way, here’s one of his tracks:

feat Jazzu – Mano (Remake) by leon somov

And a recent video:

Photo credit: MTV Europe

TracksOnAMap is an outcome of the Berlin Music Hackday. It was built by Johan Uhle (with the help of our own Katharina and Eric) on top of the SoundCloud API and features hundreds of recent tracks uploaded to SoundCloud in thousands of different locations around the globe.

To get started, simply zoom in to a location of your choice and click the purple dots – each dot shows that there are tracks available in that area, the bigger the dots, the more tracks for you to check out.

Pictured above, you’ll see a recent track coming straight out of San Francisco – Bassnectar with a preview of his remix he did for Fever Ray’s ‘When I Grow Up‘. On the upper right corner of the window you can share the link to the city on Twitter and Facebook or just copy the direct link (see picture on the right). Below the track playing, you’ll be able to select more tracks from the same location.

In the main player you’ll find direct links to the artist and track on SoundCloud and you can also link back to that specific track on TracksOnAMap via Facebook & Twitter. If you wish to just randomly discover tracks, hit the arrow on the right and the app will take you on a trip around the world to a city of its choice. Clicking on a genre below the player will filter the tracks according to how they were tagged by a SoundCloud user.

We like it a lot! Nice work, Johan.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Our team keeps growing. Continuing our interview series with new SoundCloud teamsters, today we’re introducing you to David. He’s been on the team for a while now but has only been able to sit down for chat now. So here it goes:

David, what’s your role in the SoundCloud team and how long have you been on board?

I’m the SoundCloud Evangelist and Community Manager, my role is to get people excited about SoundCloud and doing everything in my power to keep it that way.

I send out virtual band-aids (read: answer support emails) to users experiencing “Doh’s” on the site (read: bugs), post news to our blog, Twitter, Facebook & Tumblr accounts and pretty much everything in between that doesn’t require my non-existing coding skills.

That includes helping artists and labels get their accounts or remix competitions ready and managing our forums on GetSatisfaction, where with the fantastic help of our users we’ve grown a massive help resource and have collected some really great suggestions we then evaluate with the team. Besides, there’s a lot of copy tweaking here and there, lots of networking and I love adding more emails to Dave’s inbox. He then reciprocates my love by adding even more to mine. (Oh look, pandas).

Currently, I’m busy reaching out to some users and speak with them on Skype about how they’ve been using SoundCloud, what they think of the upcoming updates on the PRO accounts and see if they have any good suggestions based on their daily usage. It’s great to be able to get to know our users on a more personal level and it’s even greater to see that today’s technology makes it super-easy to do exactly that. Contact me if you wanna chat.

Although having met Alex & Eric after they just got started, I only joined in late July. Haven’t looked back since.

What’s the funniest support request / report you’ve received since you joined?

My absolute favorite goes something like this: “Hey guys, awesome site but I noticed a little typo in the upper left of the page. It says “Hej” and I think this should say “Hey”.” This makes me giggle every time. It actually means “Hello” in Swedish.

How many emails/tweets/comments/forum posts do you write on a normal day?

Normal day? Are you kidding? Well, let’s see: I have 6 email accounts, the GetSatisfaction admin panel, two Twitter accounts (Hey Tweetie, you’re awesome!), a Facebook account, the SoundCloud Facebook Page, two Tumblr blogs and our main blog right here.

Yeah, I write/post quite a lot every day & night. “Inbox Zero” currently is more like an urban legend to me but I hope to find a great intern soon to help me out.

So, how do you become an Evangelist & Community Manager – there’s not really an education for that?

Tough one, Eric. I have no idea – no, there doesn’t seem to be an education except for “the street school” I guess. But let me try.

In my opinion, the most important thing is passion. Personally, I’ve always admired SoundCloud as a product & service, the team and the way it has evolved to what it is today. It solves a problem, it is user-focused, technology-driven and a remarkably well executed business. So to join SoundCloud with the task to evangelize the service and its users was a no-brainer for me. I love this quote by Tumblr staffer Jared in his post about AnyClip from earlier this week: “You log on to AnyClip with a mission, and you leave with passion“. What a great mantra for any given web service.

I think you need a couple of years of experience navigating through different parts of a (web)business: it requires a marketing mindset, communication skills, deep understanding of the product, strategy and the vision behind it. You basically take all that knowledge and energy and put it out there, gather users and friends around you and march forward. The more you are, the stronger you get and the more you receive back.

If you would like to tap into what this actually means, I suggest reading Creating Customer Evangelists written by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba and Tribes by Seth Godin. Both are great books to start with. Even for an artist or a label, you’ll find a lot of useful insights in there. Remember: it’s all about the people you get excited about the things you do.  A recent post on Guardian.co.uk titled How can a new act stand out of the crowd wraps up with the question: “Who are your trusted filters?” – can you answer it?

Your last name (Noël) sounds french – what’s your background?

I was born and raised in a small town in Belgium called Eupen which is in the German-speaking part of the country. I dropped out of college, moved to Cologne, Germany where I worked as an A&R for an indie label before spending three years on the roads all across Europe tour managing bands from around the world. After that I worked for a marketing agency while going to school in the evenings to get a Marketing degree. In 2006, I co-founded a startup and left at the end of last year before an epic reset on the beaches of Thailand. Returning home, I spent a couple of months consulting startups and agencies before finally joining the mighty Cloud.

You spend a lot of time on the web – any favorite sites or trends right now?

Unfortunately I don’t find the time to hang around any new/other sites too much. I absolutely love Tumblr: drop-dead simple blogging platform and an awesome team & community around it. Big fan also of Anthony and his little (actually not so little) Hype Machine. I love the power of Twitter, am happy to be a Spotify Premium user and can’t wait for Foursquare Berlin. If Facebook works a bit on its UI, it’s close to be a perfect social network. Oh and Google is plain and simply great. Everything these guys do is amazing, we use it all the time – it’s incredible what they’ve achieved for the entire tech-industry.

What I love about the web right now is its openness. Instead of closed gardens like a couple of years ago, the web has grown into that huge connected octopus (a very cute one) and it flattens the world much more than ever. We love API’s and believe in the power of the layered web. It’s incredible to see all that creativity out there, triggered by accessible data, turning something into something totally new. Can’t wait to see how developers play around with our own API.

On the contrary – what do you hate about the web?

Spam. Can’t believe they’re still trying. Even worse: can’t believe they actually succeed in some cases.

Could you name three artists to describe your musical taste?

That’s way too hard to answer. If a track is great, chances are that I’ll love it. To see what I liked recently, see my Last.fm and Hype Machine profiles or check out my favorites on SoundCloud. Current favs: Tom Petty, Neil McSweeney and Mumford & Sons.

Thanks, David! And welcome. Any more links for us?

Sure, my pleasure. Find me on Twitter (@David), SoundCloud or Tumblr.

The fine peeps over at French label Infiné Music chose SoundCloud and the group feature to find tracks to be compiled on the upcoming yet-to-be-named mix series by French DJ & composer Agoria. You may remember his 2007 compilation At The Controls that topped the end-of-the-year writers poll of Resident Advisor – described as “one of the finest and era-defining” compilations and “the canon by which every other recorded mixes will have to be judged by”. Sounds thrilling.

Grab the bull by the horns and submit your track (of any style!) to his group on SoundCloud until October 27th. If you get picked by Agoria, you and your track will be featured on the new mix 12”.

Yesterday marked the closing date for Röyksopp’s Tricky Tricky remix competition. The band announced it little over a month ago and wow, what a fantastic turn-out! We’re happy to announce that exactly 849 tracks were submitted to the contest via the SoundCloud Group DropBoxes.

The winners will be announced the week of October 26th on Röyksopp’s website. In the meantime, listen to the submissions below and pick your favorite remix:

United Kingdom:

Röyksopp ‘Tricky Tricky’ remix competition UK

United States:
Röyksopp ‘Tricky Tricky’ remix competition USA

Australia:
Röyksopp ‘Tricky Tricky’ remix competition Australia

Germany:
Röyksopp ‘Tricky Tricky’ remix competition Germany

Norway:
Röyksopp ‘Tricky Tricky’ remix competition Norway

France:
Röyksopp ‘Tricky Tricky’ remix competition France

It’s great to see artists and labels using SoundCloud’s group features and the players for their remix competitions. If you need any assistance while setting up your own remix contest and would like to use SoundCloud, let us know – we’ll be happy to help.

As we announced in yesterday’s newsletter, we will have our first SoundCloud user group chat today. Want to give us feedback, ask questions, meet other SoundCloud users or SoundCloud staffers? All that will be possible if you tune in today (Friday, October 2nd) at 6.00pm CET.

We’ve set up a chat room over at Tinychat and we’ll be waiting for you at 6pm sharp. Join us for a nice Friday afternoon chat (Berlin-time obviously), we’ll be having a beer and will answer all your questions for about an hour before jumping into weekend-mode.

Click here to join in, no need to sign-up or anything, just pick your nickname (preferably your SoundCloud username) and you’re all set.

We hope you can make it – we’re looking forward to this.