Mark your calendars and join us for a full weekend of hacking during the first German Music Hack Day on September 18/19/20 at Radialsystem V in Berlin.

In July, a group of more than 200 music techheads gathered at the Guardian offices in London for an overly successful first Music Hack Day. After a long night of coding, about 30 new websites, projects, instruments and software saw the light of the day – we’ve blogged about a bunch of them before: Citysounds.fm, the iPhone Music Visualiser and SoundDrop. Click here for more hacks from that night.

So now it’s time to get everyone together in one of the world’s most important cities for music: Berlin. We want hackers to code and music companies to showcase their API’s and products people can hack on and hopefully at the end of the weekend we’ll see a whole lot of new music awesomeness.

Confirmed partners so far: Ableton, De:Bug, Tape.tv and of course us.

The event is totally free and non-commercial and we would like to keep it this way. We’re still looking for companies interested to sponsor breakfast, lunch or dinner as well as soft drinks and some beer. If you’d like to contribute, please contact us. Any help is greatly appreciated and will ensure that every participant can attend at no charge. Here’s what’s open and what’s already covered:

• Breakfast Saturday: provided by Cloudspeakers
• Lunch Saturday: provided by Ableton
• Dinner Saturday: provided by Tape.tv
• Breakfast Sunday: provided by De:Bug
• Lunch Sunday: provided by Mr. Wong
• Location & Infrastructure Sponsors: Nokia, Press Pause Play, Native Instruments and The unbelievable Machine Company
• Softdrink & Beer Sponsors: Red Bull, Ableton, Future Audio Workshop and Tape.tv
  

Registration is free and is limited to 150 participants tops so please register early and let us know how you’d like to contribute. The venue will be open 24 hours and you can stay overnight and hack thru the night.

We’d like to thank the entire teams of all2gethernow, newthinking communications and Music Hack Day for all their help making this possible.

Photo credit: Radialsystem V

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.

Thank you for a fantastic release party everyone. We had a great time, hope you did too. We want to grab this opportunity to also thank some people that made this celebration possible.

In the early evening, Swedish new jazz wave musicians Nils Berg (Sax, Flute), Josef Kallerdahl (Bass) and Sebastian Voegler (Drums) played two dirty jazz noir sets that some say was the highlight of the whole evening. Thanks for starting the night with such beautiful music.

In the middle of all the stress we forgot to mention one of the DJ’s that were playing in the evening so let’s correct that error. Fredrik Nyberg aka NIBC played tunes that made all the people outside both warm and in dance mode. Thank you Fredrik! A lot of people were also asking about the food and I’m very to happy to be able to present our caterer and star chef, Shannon Campbell. We are glad you liked his food and so is he.

Tanja & Björn over at PICKNICK also deserve a huge thanks. I can definitely say that your club now lies even closer to our hearts.

And our secret guest and old friend Snax did absolutely not let us down. Two songs was all that was needed to understand this mans brilliance. Check the photos below and you’ll see what we mean. Also check this video from our pre-release rooftop party.

Last but not least, our intern Johan Uhle made all the difference in organizing this monster. Nothing had worked without you and we wish you good luck on the tour with The Golden Pony Boy.

And to finish off, here are some pictures from the party. Photographer Tony Dahlgren

Nils Berg 3

Clouds and Crowds

Outside area

Johan in a good mood

Claudia and Stef

Ted and Martina

Hannes relaxing with no less than 3 beers after a marathon coding session

Sushu with SC branded phone

Cloud on sleeve

Alex with his new jacket

Cloud on back

DJ Humus working the decks

Raving crowd

Eric and Alex trying to stay cool

Dance!

Snax is back!

X-berg girls

Olof & Anders

Tanja and Katharina

The Subliminal Kid and Van Rivers

The end

See you at our next party!

Have you noticed the big, fat countdown on the front page? Wondering why it’s there? And what happens when it reaches 0 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds?

Well, the answer is… we’re opening up!

Yes, you heard right, SoundCloud will go public next Friday night when the clock strikes midnight. This means that your public tracks will be accessible from the outside world and that your friends will be able to sign up for an account without an invite!

And of course there will be a party. With some great music. We’ll announce the artists one by one on this blog starting tomorrow. Please do let us know if you want to come. We’re so much looking forward to dance with you guys.

Along with the countdown, we’ve expanded our tour page with a little video showing what the cloud is capable of these days. We got some serious help with the voiceover by Berlin-based house connoisseur and DJ, Michelle Owen. And the backing music is by no less than Trickski. Check the fab result right here:

To all our beta testers we just want to say: We. Love. You. The feedback you’ve shared with us has been invaluable. And you’re the ones making it so great to hang out in the cloud.

Again, big, Big, BIG thanks. Now let’s take SoundCloud to the next level.

After entering Sean’s World, we’d like to invite you to learn more about the super-skillful Katharina Birkenbach. As the only german citizen who’s part of the SoundCloud team (for now!), Katharina has been with us since our beginning in May 2007 and has helped us tremendously. Here’s what she has to say concerning her involvement with SC:

• Welcome Katharina! As an introduction, could you tell us when did you start showing interest for computers and programming?

Very very late to be honest. I always considered computers ugly and preferred not to have one in my appartment. But in 2000, I finally bought my first Apple and since then i did not spend a single day without it.

• And how did you go from enjoying your first computer to working for the best music site ever?

Some years ago, I studied visual communication with the original goal to become a fashion photographer. But I lost interest in that after I got my first computer so I started making websites, something that I love and still do. I’m mainly interested in somewhat organically growing in some sort of way by learning websites, so i was happy to find myself some years later in Amsterdam working for Mediamatic, which is a design agency with a strong cultural, educational and indirect political background. After three years I returned to Berlin to set up Mediamatic Berlin, which failed and I ended up sitting in offices without airco. So i had to flee to St-Oberholz where i met Eric and that’s when he asked me to join in their office space.

• So how did SoundCloud appeal to you?

I always had an interest for music, and even though i’m completely not musical, I always try to sneak in…

• Could you briefly explain in which areas you’re working the most for the Soundcloud platform?

Well, back then in Amsterdam, I was sometimes complaining that i don’t want to be the css-meisje, which i basically am now at SoundCloud. But here it’s fun and actually very interesting.

• What sort of music do you like? What’s your favourite artists?

I don’t have a favourite artist. I like every, and I mean every, kind of music as longs as it’s good. Together with a friend of mine I had some years ago an internetradioshow and it was called “lovesongs and other tragedies”. This would be my favourite genre, I guess.

• Have you already discovered some interesting new artists via SoundCloud?

Yes. I found some weeks ago a remix of Feist’s “my moon, my man” by Tce and I really really liked it.

• Currently, most of the artists on SoundCloud are House & Techno producers. How does it feel to live in Berlin, the electronic music capital of the universe?

It’s exhausting, but lots of fun!