Twitter Walks Away from Soundcloud Acquisition [Report]

By Mona Zhang at SocialTimes: 

The Wall Street Journal reports [sub req'd] that Twitter walked away from negotiations to buy Soundcloud, the music-streaming service.

The Journal cites an anonymous source that said “the numbers didn’t add up.” Soundcloud is valued at $700 million, and would’ve been Twitter’s largest acquisition.

No word yet on which side initiated the talks, but Twitter is trying to find the right strategy to keep up user growth and engagement.

The company’s previous foray into the music space lead to its #Music app, which saw a 62 percent drop in usage one month after launching. Twitter shuttered the app in March of this year.

Soundcloud’s user base is roughly comparable with that of Twitter’s.

SoundCloud Adds Play Controls, History

Online audio platform SoundCloud today in a blog post announced it has added new play controls.

“You told us that you wanted to have more control when you’re playing music & audio on SoundCloud. We heard you. Which is why today we’re rolling out our brand-new play controls across soundcloud.com,” the blog post reads.

The controls, which can be found in the upper right-hand corner of SoundCloud, allow audio aficionados to:

• Pause/play;
• Skip to the next sound; and
• Go back to the previous sound to repeat once or multiple times.

The new features also include a play history — users can select “previous” to return to music/sounds that were listened to earlier during the same SoundCloud session.

In addition, if you click on the title of the current song/audio file playing, it will take you directly to the waveform and comments.

Read the full story >>

Redesigned SoundCloud Apps Include Playlists

SoundCloud has released new versions of its iPhone and Android apps for recording and sharing audio tracks.

The most noteworthy change is the addition of “sets,” which are basically playlists that listeners can curate and share. A new search filter will make the sets from other community members easier to discover.

This feature was previously available only on the desktop.

To make room for this and other features, the “record” button has been moved to the “more” menu for iPhone users and the side bar for Android users.

iPhone users will also see that the interface has been redesigned and the app icon has changed.

Users can download version 2.5 on Google Play and the Apple App Store. The company added that updates for iPad are coming soon.

Soundcloud and Spotify on the future of Online Audio

Sound will be bigger than video on the Web – that’s the assertion SoundCloud CEO Alexander Ljung made on stage during the first day at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam today.
You may think that the man behind the social audio sharing platform has a vested interest in such a statement, but he’s certainly passionate about his mission.