First Act: The New Dashboard

Sounds are social. It doesn’t matter if you’re capturing sounds out in the wild, spending sleepless nights writing this one particular song or composing music for a new Hamlet play, getting immediate feedback on your work is always special, validating and gratifying. We all love to see the play counter go from 0 to 10 to 1000 and sometimes even beyond. Receiving that first timed comment, a retweet or Facebook like after sharing your creation with the people that matter most to you is what drives us to make SoundCloud better every day. So today, we’ve got some exciting news to share with you.

In short: using SoundCloud just got a hell of a lot easier, in three acts. On to the first one…

First Act: The New Dashboard

Last month, we released a first step towards a new and more streamlined Dashboard with the aim to keep you better updated about what’s going on in your SoundCloud world.

Today, we’re happy to roll out the full new version of the new Dashboard and are finally re-introducing the Dashboard settings y’all have been missing so dearly (thanks for your patience)! Here’s what’s new:

On the top left of your Dashboard, you’ll find a new settings picker that lets you select the updates you’d like to see in your stream.

Tracks: you’re able to select your Dashboard to show exclusive tracks (tracks shared only with you, your DropBox or to a few other people), tracks from people you follow and tracks from people you don’t follow. They’ll appear in two separate new tabs: Incoming tracks and Exclusive tracks.

Activity on your tracks: you’ll get notified about new timed and regular comments on your tracks and also when others add one of your tracks to their favorites in another new Dashboard tab.

Activity from people you follow: you’re also able to opt into receiving updates about comments and favorites from the people you follow on SoundCloud to see what they’ve been up to.

Conversations: here’s where you’ll be able to select to stay updated about replies to your timed and regular comments (called mentions), new posts in the forums you’re involved in and follow-up comments that keep you updated with comments from others in places you were active.

And here’s another new addition: Introduction sharings

Every now and then, your Dashboard will show you a track from someone you’re not following. We call this an introduction sharing and will be the first track ever shared with you by this user and is a nice way to discover new and interesting people to follow that you’d perhaps have missed otherwise.

Read about today’s Second and Third Act and as always, let us know what you think in the comments (or if something’s not working right).