SoundCloud

SoundCloud is a cloud-based platform for audio & music, you could loosely say we're the 'Flickr for audio'. Users range from artists to major labels, music bloggers to journalists, amateur musicians to mastering studios. From MC Hammer to EMI, HypeMachine to The Guardian.

What you need to know

Read the developer docs
Check out our existing API wrappers for Ruby, Python and Cocoa
Take a look at application examples, a simple use case and walkthrough for OAuth
If you’re interested in authenticated access to the API, read up on oAuth and register your application here
Try calling methods and monitor the response using our console
Join the SoundCloud API mailing list

About the API

Out RESTful API including oAuth, XML, JSON, exposes the full range of SoundCloud functionality for third-party developers. You can upload tracks, access comments & tracks, edit metadata & more. We aim to establish a platform where artists, labels and music professionals around the planet can host, share and receive music in the smartest and maost efficient way imaginable. Read our full manifesto.

Hack Ideas

Desktop Applications

An uploader app that let’s you drag’n’drop any sound file to push it to the cloud & decide who has access to it.
A file system plugin (fuse?) that lets you mount your SoundCloud account and add files to it by dragging and dropping.
A little radio cloud that sits on your desktop (or maybe it’s a dashboard widget) and plays music from your dashboard and the hotlist. It could show comments popping up while music is being played.
A plugin for an audio editor to be able to “bounce-to-web” and share with friends straight from within the editor.
A feed style app for SoundCloud similar to Twhirl where you can monitor your dashboard and listen to tracks right from your desktop.

Web apps / mash-ups

A portal using SoundCloud for setting up and promoting remix competition
"The world music map". A nice world map visualization where you can zoom in and listen to music that was created in that part of the world or tracks are are listened to a lot in this region.
Audio visualizer that uses the timed comments for textual-based artistic visualization at the right point in the track.
Export and/or sync to MySpace: login with your myspace account on the app, which then syncs your latest tracks to the myspace artist-profile player in the background
"SoundCards": Moocards+SoundCloud, invite codes for tracks with waveform displays for the track on the card, with comments about it
An app that lets a limited amount of people discuss a track without the author seeing it. Ideal for a label that want to discuss the future of a track (release or not).

iPhone / Mobile

iPhone app. Jiggy could be nice to play around with for that. While on wifi the app could sync the latest tracks on your dashboard for playback on the go.
Player app that synchs heard/unheard marker & playcounts & allows one-tap favoriting and commenting.
Native app for sampling audio and posting to SC
Add-ons to pocket guitar, iAno etc to let you record audio and post to SC
Webapp for adding priviliges to a soundcloud user or email address on a private track (e.g. I’m at a concert where I meet an interesting producer and can directly give him/her access to a private track of mine)