Soundcloud is possibly my favourite music website. I use it at least every week for a variety of music purposes. I love the clean feel of the site and the intuitive simple functions. It is such a user-friendly and well evolved website, that it is hard to believe they are just celebrating their 1st birthday. As any kind of musician, label owner, radio / podcast show host and more, Soundcloud is a great way to send and receive music, and it provides an efficient way to distribute, privately or publicly. It is becoming a hugely popular tool, and yet their friendly nature is still seen across the site. In their words, “We’re a few people who moved from Stockholm to Berlin, found some more cool people there and set up a small company to create the best dedicated music site in the world.”

Quick Facts
* SoundCloud is an online audio platform for music professionals that makes sending and receiving music simple and efficient.
* Accounts are accessible to everyone.
* SoundCloud is in use by many of the worlds leading electronic music producers and labels.
* Some people think of SoundCloud as an email application but for music, and with a play button.
* Founded in 2007 by Swedes Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss and based in Berlin–Mitte, Germany.

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If you’ve not left your TV, radio and internet-less cocoon for the last four weeks, then you wouldn’t have realized that Madonna has just released her 11^th studio album, Hard Candy. With all-due respect to the comeback(?) queen of pop (I guess she’s never really been away long enough for a comeback), what really caught my attention was the promotion of the album.

Madonna has always re-invented herself to the new emerging markets, physically and musically. This album is no different, and working with the biggest producers of recent years, Timbaland and The Neptunes, as well as performing alongside Justin Timberlake on the launch single, ‘4 minutes’, ensures that sales are already through the roof thanks to a fresh generation of music buyers and millions of long-term fans.

But the way that this album was also marketed to the new generation of music buyers really struck me. With the release date being 28^th April (in the UK), Warner Bros decided to market the album by releasing seven songs on the seven days prior to this, available to download via mobile phone. Myself growing up with CDs, I quite like the artwork of and album, and I like to read all the inlay notes while I listen to it for the first time (GEEK ALERT!). I’m sure people love vinyl LPs partly for the same reason. However you can’t ignore the streams of ‘yoofs’ around the shopping malls, all playing the latest pop tracks on their mobile phones – the market here is huge! Gone are the days of monotone rings, these are full mp3s, and all the major mobile companies offer various packages and download sites through which they aim to claim back some of the download music monopoly that Apple hold.

I look forward to hearing more about how the move was received by her worldwide audience, and I’m sure I’ll be bringing you more news on this very soon. I think that as much as recent years have been a rocky ride for the digital music industry, the years ahead will be filled with innovative ways to feed the revolution.

Lee.

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