Most of you have probably noticed the recent slow- and downtimes we’ve experienced on the site lately. First of all: a huge and sincere Sorry to all of you from the entire team here at SoundCloud.

While putting the finishing touches to the couple of goodies we have lined up for you, we’ve clearly underestimated the growth that SoundCloud has seen in the past weeks and months. Until end of last week, we juggled between finishing the upcoming features and at the same time making sure that the site is up during peak times (usually starting around 9pm CET).

After numerous night shifts and quick fixes we figured that these fixes are not fully satisfactory. We’re going to prioritize the improvements on the performance side of things before we launch any new features to the site.

All developers are currently on different tasks to improve the general experience, but here’s a quick higher-level outline we wanted to share with you:

New database servers:

We’re waiting for the new servers to arrive and they should be with us soon. We’ll be making sure to have them installed and ready-to-go as quick as possible but in the meantime, we have several backup machines that should be fully functional in the next days.

Dashboard:

We’re planning some fixes that will hopefully make the Dashboard performance better, especially after logging in.

Database:

We will optimize the general writing & reading off the databases, especially everything related to mailboxes, comments, tracks and API calls that will make the site faster.

We promise to continue working hard and will do our best to improve the short-term performance to give you back the best experience when uploading your tracks & artwork, when seeing the waveform being created and when commenting on tracks. Also, it looks like we’ll be able to bring back the delete option on your Dashboard very very soon. We’ll update this post as soon as it happens and also post to Twitter.

Our goal clearly is to bring SoundCloud back on the fast lane and we have made it our priority to ensure that SoundCloud runs smoothly.

We’ve set up a status blog over at our friends at Tumblr where we started posting updates about the site status. Feel free to follow the blog if you’re a Tumblr user or subscribe to the RSS feed. Additionally, we will keep you posted on our Twitter account.

On that note: we’re still looking for a kick-ass system administrator whose thrill is to help us scale a rapidly growing community of music lovers. If you’re the champion we’re looking for, apply here.

Again, from everyone at the SoundCloud HQ, apologies for the lack of communication on this.

Update (04/11 – 5.23pm): The Dashboard delete buttons are back. Thanks for your patience.

Update (06/11 – 11.55am): Phew that was a hard one to crack but we discovered a misbehaving monitoring script that made an unusual amount of requests in very small intervals. Good news is that soon after resolving, we observed a significant increase and stabilization of the site performance. The new databases have arrived and mostly installed and the fixes & improvements of the last days have also helped.

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!

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.

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.

What a nice surprise! Late last night, we received an email from SoundCloud user Vitaliy Pronkin informing us that he just added a SoundCloud integration to the iPhone app he developed: SoundGrid. Here’s what it does:

SoundGrid aims to be the most advanced matrix sequencer for iPhone / iPod Touch to create stunning audio-visual performances in a moment and wherever you are. It was inspired by famous Yamaha Tenori-On and popular ToneMatrix webapp by André Michelle.

That is so cool! We’re big fans of the Tenori-On and André has been a long-time SoundCloud user and friend. We’re psyched to see Vitaliy bringing all of this together. He goes on saying:

In the last version ability to record tracks was added and obviously I decided to support direct export to Soundcloud (thank you for great service btw). All exported tracks can be found here and also there’s special group to which users encouraged to add their creations.

Below, you’ll find a couple of examples – of course – in a SoundCloud player. Nice!

Watch the video to see the app in action:

Very well done, Vitaliy! Thanks for the heads-up on this one and for the support to export to SoundCloud. We’re stoked.

It’s been a while since our last teamster interview so we thought to share the news with you today about our latest addition to the team. Henrik joins the rest of the gang. Read on…

• Welcome to the team, Henrik! Could you tell us how you fell in love with computers & technology in general and how you ended up moving to Berlin to join SoundCloud?

Thanks, I’m really excited to be here! The short version is that I bought Cubase to learn about music production when I was about sixteen. Music and technology have always been my main interests (alongside sports) and I fell in love with the idea of combining them. I got into professional sound engineering and radio production but eventually felt like doing something different and began studying.

Engineering physics was totally boring but I specialized in interaction design which is a really interesting subject. I did my thesis work at Propellerhead Software and stayed there to work with the beta testing of Record. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about the music technology industry and software development in general.

I had met Eric and Alex through university so I used to pop by the SoundCloud office whenever I was visiting Berlin. Applying for this job was a natural decision since I had plans to move to Berlin and really like the SoundCloud spirit. I knew I wanted to keep working with music and technology and this job also gives me the opportunity to learn more about the web.

• How have you been enjoying Berlin so far and what do you think is so special about Berlin?

It’s been a lot more work and a lot less clubbing this time, but I’m really looking forward to start building a new life here and see the city from that perspective. Berlin has a special atmosphere and I think it’s the most interesting city in Europe right now, at least for people like me. I believe it will continue to evolve in interesting ways and it’s great to be part of that.

• Tell us a little bit more about what you’re working on right now.

I’m getting everything in place for setting up new partnerships and also making sure all ongoing projects run smoothly. It will be very interesting to see how we can improve the musical web by integrating applications and services with SoundCloud.

• What sort of music do you like? What are your favorite artists?

I mainly listen to electronic music, especially when I work, but I also like pop and hip hop. Here are some artists to give you a better feeling for what I like at the moment: Kollektiv Turmstrasse, Mathias Kaden, Intrusion, Burial, Junior Boys, Empire of the Sun, Bon Iver, and Gang Starr. Perhaps I should also mention that I was a fan of Eric’s (Forss) album Soulhack before I got to know him.

Thanks!

We just received the word about a cool new music creation application for the iPhone called JR Hexatone Pro that supports direct export to your SoundCloud account.

The app was developed by Amidio, a company specialised in the creation of music apps for the iPhone. Here’s how they describe JR Hexatone:

It’s a loop generation tool that uses artificial intelligence and advanced randomization algorithms to produce constantly changing sonic structures. The app is able to create and modify many type of drum loops, melodic sequences or rhythm patterns in realtime. You can also engage built-in Stutter or Chorus effects and control them with the iPhone’s accelerometer.

The application comes with a vast library of original samples and loop presets. Your loops get exported as .WAV files and you can export to your SoundCloud account or hard drive.

To export to SoundCloud, click Menu -> More ->File Manager-> select sample/track and click the SoundCloud logo in the lower-right.

Here’s Jordan Rudess introducing the app in a 10-minute video.

Direct link to the iPhone App Store: JR Hexatone Pro

Exactly one month ago, we introduced you to Citysounds.fm, a really cool mashup created by Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud during the London Music Hack Day. Citysounds is built on top of the SoundCloud API and makes it easy to browse through SoundCloud tracks from a specific city around the world.

Today, Henrik and David inform us about a big update they just launched and let me tell you that it’s pretty exciting. They’ve added a great set of features and we think that the current look & feel is a big improvement. So what’s new?

Show more tracks from one city: when selecting a city on the frontpage, you’ll be able to click through to the city overview page where it will show you more tracks from that city:

There is a set of new features added to each city overview page:

Browse: Listen to the latest tracks, browse through the most popular genres or just hit shuffle.

Interesting stats: San Francisco for instance has a total of 237 tracks and every week, an average of 37 new tracks are added which makes San Francisco the 10th most active city on Citysounds.fm (and SoundCloud for that matter). Currently, the most popular genres are Dubstep, House and Electro.

There’s more:

Share via Twitter: If you’d like to share a city on Twitter, just hit the button on the bottom right of the page. In a new window, the city and link to Citysounds are already included. and you can edit your tweet if you like. Once posted, your name will be added to the list of Listeners. Really cool!

Browse more: on a city overview page, Citysounds will show you more cities from the same country. Or just hit Random City and it will randomly choose a city for you to discover. Trust me, there is music to discover from cities you’ve probably never heard of.

Ever wondered what music they play in Budapest, Gent, Helsinki, Minsk or Tarragona? Check it out or start with the usual suspects London, Berlin or Los Angeles. Have a great weekend everyone!

Oh, one more thing: If you’re a developer and have other cool ideas like Citysounds you’d want to build, save the date: We’ll be holding a Music Hack Day in Berlin on September 21st/22nd 18th-20th. Stay tuned for details and make sure you block the date to join us for some music hacking. Details to follow.

Another week, another blogging service integrated to the Sharing option on SoundCloud. This week’s guest: Blogger.com.

Here’s your step-by-step guide to show you how easy it is to share your favorite tracks, sets and group sets to your blog hosted on Blogger.com.

Let’s start by looking at the Share options where you’ll see the Blogger logo:

Now when you click it, we’ll ask you to authorize SoundCloud to connect with your Blogger account (you can always change the authorization settings in your Blogger/Google account):

By clicking Go to Authorization, you’ll be redirected to the Google page (shown below) where you simply click Grant access. Once the access was granted, we will take you back to the page on SoundCloud to continue with your post.

In the window pictured below, you’ll be able to edit your post title, add tags and write more about the track/set/group you wish to post. You can also save the post as a draft if you don’t want it to get posted immediately.

Click Post and – Ta-da – you just blogged a SoundCloud track: