It’s time for yet an announcement for all you API lovers out there; a library making it really easy to implement SoundCloud streaming in your Cocoa apps. It’s built specially for the iPhone SDK 3.+ but should work for desktop Mac apps as well.

The library is a vital part of the SoundCloud iPhone app and will be used in the upcoming CitySound iPhone app as well. It’s written by Ullrich Schäfer and open source under the Apache License version 2.0.

To sum up, this library…

• makes it easy to implement the non trivial task of streaming audio in Cocoa apps
• nicely integrates with the existing Cocoa wrapper for the SoundCloud API
• supports streaming of public and OAuth protected tracks
• fits in commercial apps as well as music hack day mashups etc.

Head over to github and check out the source code along with the demo application.

Feedback, questions, and suggestions are welcome in the SoundCloud API Google group!

A lot of developers asked for it and now you can has it: programming level access to the SoundCloud Widget Player.

Via the new Widget API you can access functions like play and pause, show additional info about the currently playing track on your page or even hide our widget and create your own JavaScript based interface for it.

Check out this demo and some code examples. It only takes a few lines like:

soundcloud.addListener('onPlayerReady', function(player, data) {
  console.log("widget ready, let's play");
  player.api_play();
});

The Widget API also integrates nicely with the popular JavaScript frameworks jQuery and Prototype.

The source code is available at github together with the documentation.

We’re curious to hear what you think so please post feedback and feature requests in our Google group. You are also welcome to contribute to the project if you think there’s something missing.

Tuesday’s Taylor release revealed two new apps built by our friends Christian Stropp and Dorian Roy. The apps are built on top of the SoundCloud API and are very similar in terms of features – letting you upload audio to your SoundCloud account by simply dragging and dropping files onto the apps.

• Christian’s app is called CloudPost and works on Mac OS 10.5 or later.

• Dorian’s app is called Scup and works on both Windows and Mac OS but you need to have Adobe AIR installed.

—

Note that these apps are not maintained by SoundCloud. Please send feedback and bug reports to Christian and Dorian. Also, CloudPost is open source if you want to contribute to the project.

—

The first time you launch your desktop uploader you need to connect the app with your SoundCloud account.

Just click the button and you are automatically forwarded to SoundCloud where you can allow access to your account.

Note that the app is not storing your SoundCloud password. Instead it gets a temporary key that you can make unusable anytime by revoking the access on your account settings page. This is good if you for instance work temporarily on someone else’s computer.

Once the app is authorized you can start dragging files onto the drop window.

The files are uploaded automatically but set to private by default so no one can access them until you hit “Send Set”.

You can add information and drag artwork onto the image box. You can also add more tracks by dragging files onto the application.

If you make the set private you can enter email addresses to the people you want to share with.

When you are done with the settings, hit “Send Set” and the set ends up on your account page.

We think these apps are pretty cool and would like to thank Christian and Dorian for developing them! Try it out and let them (and us) know what you think.

As you’ve probably noticed, our wrapper announcements come often these days. Today we’re adding a PHP wrapper written by Anton Lindqvist to the list of available libraries for the SoundCloud API. Here you’ll find the documentation.

PHP is a widely used scripting language and the addition of this wrapper will open up for SoundCloud integration in a wide range of web services.

Check the list of application ideas and start hacking right away – even if you’re not planning to attend the music hack day tonight at Radialsystem V in Berlin.

We encourage 3rd party developers to join our API group and follow @soundcloudapi on twitter to get updates and take part in the discussions!

Today we have yet a new API announcement – a universal SoundCloud API wrapper for Flash, Flex and AIR projects, written in ActionScript 3.0.

It’s written by Dorian Roy and here’s a quote from his blog:

This library enables your Flash or Flex projects to communicate with SoundCloud’s API to upload tracks, create playlists, edit user info and so on. It handles all the complicated OAuth authentication in the background so you only have to deal with a few simple methods.

Here you’ll find more info and a quick start tutorial for how to connect a Flash app to SoundCloud.

Today we’re very excited about adding a C wrapper to the list of libraries for the SoundCloud API. It’s written by Dave Gamble and supports OAuth 1.0a among other nifty features. With a few lines of code you can build desktop apps that can do things like:

• Exporting audio to SoundCloud
• Play the latest tracks shared publicly or privately
• Handling track comments
• And more…

Still two days left until Music Hack Day but check out the documentation and start hacking right away to get ahead of the competition with your C based SoundCloud apps. Also check out the featured apps and application ideas if you need inspiration to get going.

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

How’s it going Cloudettes and Clouders?

We’ve been working on a few background things these last few days, so unfortunately we don’t have any spectacular new functions to present you. But hold tight to your mice, trackpads, trackballs and other interactive devices as we’re preparing a major release in 2 weeks!

While you’re waiting for the next SoundCloud bonanza we’d like to present you a new installment of our popular “Interview Time” series. This month, super-skilled programmer Hannes Tydén switches off his browser tabs for a few minutes and tells us a bit more about the real life up in the Cloud:

• Välkommen Hannes! Glad you could find the time between your intense coding sessions to introduce yourself! Could you tell us how you fell in love with computers and how you ended up moving to Berlin to work on SoundCloud?

I’ve been interested in technology as long as I can remember, and played my fair share of video and computer games since the age of seven. I remember trying to program my Commodore 64, without any success. But the interest in programming started growing in high school. I studied natural science and got a programmable calculator. I programmed it to solve all the physics and chemistry formulas, so I didn’t have to keep them in my head. Of course this made me learn the formulas by heart, but it was fun trying to beat the system.

A year later my mother bought a computer and I started playing around with Photoshop. Another year passed and we got an Internet connection, then I started coding my own personal websites, mostly about the bands I listened to back then. After a while I noticed that I was more interested in designing and coding the websites than in the actual content. It was more fun to build the tree house than to sit in it.

After graduating from high school, Eric, whom I got to know during high school, gave me a tip about an open position at SyncMediaCom, a small web agency in Stockholm, so I applied for a the job and got it. By then I was interested in industrial and graphic design and I started out doing some design work and front end development, but as the company grew I found myself doing less design and more development. This was when I realized that I’d rather work as a programmer than as a designer.

I knew I wanted to get a degree, and in 2002 I started studying computer science at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. After a trip to Berlin in 2005 I decided to move here and in September 2006 I began to study at Technische Universität Berlin as an exchange student.

During the spring of 2007 Eric contacted me and asked me if I wanted to write my master thesis for SoundCloud and now, one year later, it’s still not finished…

• Haha, so Eric tricked you into working for SoundCloud without really mentioning it. But I guess there must have been something about the platform that appealed to you?

At first I thought I would just write my thesis for SoundCloud, but as time passed I understood that there was so much more to do and also that SoundCloud really can make an impact on how musicians work, collaborate and promote their creations. This was the first time I felt that what I did actually could make a difference to other people.

Another great thing with SoundCloud is the focus on quality and functionality, in both the big and small. There is room for being creative and at the same time the technological level is higher than I’ve ever experienced. The best of two worlds.

• Well, it’s great to have you on board! Could you explain what your coding colleagues and yourself are working on at the moment?

SoundCloud as a platform gives all the smart people the chance to build what we haven’t thought of yet. At the moment we’re developing players for MySpace, Facebook and blogs so people can share their music to the public more easily. Other stuff you could build with our API (Application Programming Interface) are desktop players, applications for uploading files and also integrating comments into instant messengers like MSN and iChat.

But I think the important aspect of this is that it’s not us at SoundCloud who decides how you want to listen or react to the music in the Cloud, but anyone who feels there is some feature we overlooked while building the site.

The possibilities are endless…

• Sounds really exciting… speaking of which, what sort of music do you like? Who are your favourite artists?

It’s a wide span. At the moment it’s mostly thrash, sludge, progressive metal and hard rock mixed with minimal techno and electronica, then add a dash of pop classics. Might sound like a weird mix, but I really think they blend well.

• That’s interesting because, currently, most of the artists on SoundCloud are House & Techno producers. Do you think SoundCloud could appeal to rock & metal musicians?

Yes, of course. I believe the way they create their music is different, but after the music has been created and recorded it’s more or less the same thing. I know of people who live in one city, go to a studio in another city to record their songs and then the mastering is done by the guy at the studio. Uploading the songs to SoundCloud makes it easier for people to work this way, having a much tighter feedback loop.

• I totally agree. Did you have the chance to discover some interesting new artists via SoundCloud?

Mesak and Snax who both did excellent performances at the SoundCloud party a month ago, even if they’re completely different acts.

The last week I’ve been listening a lot to Demir’s Vorwein set and Superd who gives me some Heimweh for Stockholm.