SoundCloud Voices is a new weekly Community feature focusing on new spoken word creators found on SoundCloud. It might be a podcast, radio show, audio book, interview, audio messages, a poem, anything! Keep an eye out every Thursday for a new post.

SoundCloud voices this week is all about staying up to date on the latest current affairs, news and issues in the world today.  Following these three creators can help you do that.  From Public Radio International both The World and America Abroad are using SoundCloud as is the independently run global news hour Democracy Now! Take a listen to some of their audio below and follow them.

Democracy Now, hosted by award winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, broadcast 5 days a week, providing headlines and in depth coverage and discussions of the pressing issues of the day.  They’ve been posting pieces to their Facebook page using SoundCloud, so get following and start listening!

Next up is The World, from Public Radio International.  It’s a one hour radio news magazine everyday weekday offering the latest news, features and interviews.  Broadcast on over 300 stations the show is co production of WGBH/Boston, PRI and the BBC World Service.  They too have been using SoundCloud to share their brilliant work to their Facebook page.

America Abroad, also from Public Radio International, is more of a documentary radio program which takes a look at one critical issue in international affairs and U.S foreign policy.  Follow them on Facebook and keep up to speed on their latest work!  Below they take a look at counterfeiters and the effect is has on people’s lives. Take a listen.

If you are interested in trying out SoundCloud as a spoken word podcast platform, you can sign up for via this form. Successful candidates will be emailed with further details.

Found Sounds is a SoundCloud community feature focusing on some of the most weird and wonderful sounds that can be found on SoundCloud. Count on new installments with some of our favorite sounds each Tuesday!

Finally the winter has hit. Albeit a little late, we’re beginning to see the snow flakes fall and feel the icy winds rush around us. But what do we hear over these winter months?

It is the cracking of ice, crunching of snow and the whistle and thud of snowball fights that remind me of winter. Last month Abstraction caught this field recording of the creaking and cracking of ice on a lake, this spooky recording transposes directly in to the influences you can hear in this users music. Taking inspiration from the world around him Abstraction creates some great, haunting, ambient music.

Winter can be a beautiful time, when snow covers the ground it transforms everything around us. Just like in the Autumn, when you walk down the street you’ll hear the rustling of the leaves from peoples feet, in Winter you’ll hear the crunching of snow. What better place to talk a walk in the snow than Central Park….

After a day spent outside, what better way is there to escape the cold of the snow by settling down in an armchair by a roaring fire…

That’s all for this week’s Found Sounds! Tune in next week for more crazy sounds from the ‘Cloud.

Almost 3 months ago we announced our new HTML5 widget player. Since then we have spent a lot of time gathering your feedback, testing, bug fixing, talking to the browser vendors and improving the user interface. We were glad to hear about your experiences using the widget, we have seen an incredible uptake in sharing of the sounds played in the new widgets. With the mobile browser support we were finally able to fullfil one the main feature requests.

From the very beginning of this project we were convinced that we should bring as much of the SoundCloud experience to our widgets as possible, features that go beyond just listening to the sounds.

Today we are adding two major new features to our HTML5 widgets – Comments and Likes. This means that from now on you’re able to comment on sounds embedded anywhere on the web and you can save them as a favorite on SoundCloud too.

Also, we are proud to announce that today we are officially switching our default widget to be the HTML5 widget. We also know that our major partners plan to support it in the near future. Of course the old Flash widget will be still available if you need it as an alternative option.