SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform which allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings.

SoundCloud was originally started in Stockholm, Sweden, but was established in Berlin, Germany in August, 2007 by sound designer Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss. It had the intention of allowing musicians to share recordings with each other, but later transformed into a full publishing tool which also allowed musicians to distribute their music tracks.

A few months after it began operating, SoundCloud began to challenge the dominance of MySpace as a platform for musicians to distribute their music by allowing recording artists to interact more nimbly with their fans.

In a 2009 interview with Wired, co-founder Alex Ljung said:

“We both came from backgrounds connected to music, and it was just really, really annoying for us to collaborate with people on music — I mean simple collaboration, just sending tracks to other people in a private setting, getting some feedback from them, and having a conversation about that piece of music. In the same way that we’d be using Flickr for our photos, and Vimeo for our videos, we didn’t have that kind of platform for our music.”