Interview with Soundcloud’s Alexander Ljung: How streaming, apps & APIs made our year
midemblog caught up with Soundcloud’s co-founder Alexander Ljung at Paris’ internet conference LeWeb in December 2011, to assess the year when the audio startup reached 9 million users. He answered the following questions: – How was 2011 for Soundcloud? – How many users do you have now & are you profitable yet? – Streaming has gone… mainstream in 2011. Are you thinking “we were right all along”? – Do you have a favourite Soundcloud artist success story from 2011? – As an open API advocate, how do you react to developments like OpenEMI? Ljung notably commented that Soundcloud as a platform now has 250 applications, including an automatic transcription with a service called SpeakerText, or simple music distribution via Tunecore. Though he wouldn’t single out specific artist success stories in principle, Ljung admitted to being impressed by cases of artists taking advantage of the internet as “a bi-directional medium…” so you can have things like artists like Imogen Heap or 50 Cents asking their fans to contribute to their music. Soundcloud will once again be strongly present at midem 2012, with Dave Haynes, the company’s VP of bizdev, co-organising the second midem hack day. More on tech at midem here: www.midem.com
Categories: MIDEM Tags: Alexander, APIs, apps, Interview, Ljung, made, Soundcloud's, Streaming, Year
Interview with James Vincent McMorrow: “Everything I’ve done has been DIY”
Irish “alternative folk” singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow spoke to MIDEMBlog ahead of his MIDEM Talent concert in Cannes. This DIY artist extraordinaire initially released his latest album, “Early in the Morning”, by himself in Ireland, with funding raised from a sync deal via EMI Publishing. The album was later released in the US by Vagrant Records, via a contact initiated at MIDEM 2010. Watch James Vincent McMorrow playing at MIDEM 2011 here: www.youtube.com More about the artist: www.jamesvmcmorrow.com
Jackie Fox interview on KROQ – With Rodney Bingenheimer
Jackie Fox interview on KROQ. During the time she was in the runaways