Fun Friday: Meet Jami Welch

Jami is an artist who used SoundCloud before he was hired, he loves finding great electronic music and ends up in hospitals way too often. This week please help me welcome Jami Welch to the team in Berlin!

Hi! Thank you for doing this interview with me and taking time out of your busy day. How are ya doing?

Hey! No worries, thanks for having me, doing pretty good thanks, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

How do you like Berlin and where are you originally from? How long have you been here so far?

I’m originally from London, but did most of my growing up a couple of hours out of town, in Surrey. I love it in Berlin, there’s always things going on (very much unlike where I grew up), but things are never in a rush, you can really take things in at your own pace. I worked at SoundCloud last summer for 3 months interning, but now I’m back full time and have been back for about two months so far.

Can you tell us what your your role at SoundCloud is? Also, how do you like working in the Berlin HQ ?

I’m one of the ever growing community team, so I spend my day assisting users and helping them get excited about what SoundCloud and it’s community has to offer them. It’s great working at the Berlin HQ, especially now that community team is big enough to necessitate sitting round the donut of power, (though sometimes the beanbags are needed after a big lunch). It’s brilliant feeling part of such a big friendly team too, total family vibes.

How did you get introduced to SoundCloud and what do you love most about it?

I started using SoundCloud about three years to share my music, and used it quite a bit at uni to share works in progress with friends. My favourite thing is the timed comments, it really opened up really interesting ways to interact with recordings, and get discussions going.

What are your favourite Sounds on the cloud?

Right now I’m really enjoying this song by NZCA/LINES, I love how the vocals overlap, it starts of quite stark and ends up really hypnotic. Some of the synth lines also remind me of super early hot chip, which is awesome.

Also, this Andy Stott EP is one of the best things to hit my ears in a long time:

And I’ve recently become a Radiolab convert. I’d not heard of the show before, but since they joined SoundCloud I’m always looking forward to the next show. The topics are so broad, and some super specialist, but they are always so fascinating, and fun.

Can you give us a few reasons why it is great working at SoundCloud?

It’s so refreshing being part of a company working towards making something better, rather than trying to flog stuff, or just steadily tick over, which I experienced at previous jobs. Everyone here seems to be believe in the company and it’s goals, which makes working towards them much more exciting.

Plus, because of all the crazy technical stuff that goes on, I’m constantly being exposed to loads of new things I’d never even heard of before. Before I came here I had no idea how much goes into a site like this, it’s mind-boggling.

Finally, do you have any fun facts about yourself that you would like to share?

I already told you about the bacon/nose story (see: Audio Interview), so I’ll try and think of something else (weirdly also hospital related):

When I was about 4, I somehow made it on to the BBC hospital drama Casualty, playing a boy who accidentally ate his dad’s weed. Of course the father couldn’t admit to this, so had to lie and say that I took sleeping pills and hilarity ensued.

I didn’t have any lines, just had to act a bit dopey.

Where can we find you on the interwebz?

(Probably way too many places, but hej)

http://soundcloud.com/seams
http://twitter.com/iamseams
http://seamsmusic.com
http://jameswelch.tumblr.com

Thanks for the great interview Jami – remember to say “Ahn-young ha sae yo” (Hello in Korean) to him in the comments!!