Sound as Social Object. Caroline Drucker of SoundCloud at Share Conference 2

Johnny Jewel's page on SoundCloud.

Besides issues such as open government, decentralisation of the Internet, copyright legislations, and others, sound maybe unexpectedly proclaimed itself as one of the biggest things of Share Conference 2. Share by Night artists played around Belgrade until dawn, trying to prove that point and maybe even bring to exhaustion both speakers and the public of the conference. Apart from this, the question of sound has been brought to the fore by the presence of Caroline Drucker of SoundCloud. Commonly seen as a new MySpace, Last.fm or YouTube, SoundCloud might be a mixture of all of that, but something else, too.

At her talk, Drucker provided us with a wider perspective on SoundCloud. First of all, as its title already states, SoundCloud is about sound, in fact, not only music, even if music-sharing is its most popular use.

Broadly speaking, SoundCloud has integrated sound capturing, processing, publishing and sharing in a single continuous environment. This interface/studio is now available for mobile devices, too, which has some not immediately apparent consequences. As Drucker pointed out, we have been carrying around sound recording devices for quite some time. In fact, our mobile phones are not just talking devices, and SoundCloud simply yelled it loud with its simple recording app boasting a huge red button which urges you to record something. But, why should we record sounds?

Continue reading...