So, yeah. Takin’ the high road on this one. No Punk’d jokes or cougar references or anything. You want to read that low-brow shit, buy one of Mr P’s overpriced books. Meanwhile, like my classy friends over at Billboard tell me, the cloudy, music-sharing-y website SoundCloud (you know, the one that lets people write annoying remarks like “whoaa, fuckin AWESOME!!!!” right on top of the waveform graphic thing?) has just received “an undisclosed amount” from Ashton Kutcher’s venture capital fund, A-Grade Fund. The way it goes down is that Kutcher, along with artist manager/entrepreneur Guy Oseary and billionaire investor Ron Burkle, basically go around throwing stacks of cash, blood diamonds, and editions of Action Comics #1 at whatever cool start-up companies they think might have a shot at hitting it big (for instance, they’ve previously made investments in such startups as non-hotel company Airbnb and non-illegal scalpers SeatGeek).
At the same time, SoundCloud also reported that it has recently surpassed five million users of its puffy, cumulus service, and co-founder Alexander Ljung is all about chalking that growth up to the butterfly effect. “It’s totally awesome to welcome Guy and Ashton into the SoundCloud family, especially this week as we celebrate such a significant user milestone,” he said. “A-Grade are joining our mission to get everyone creating and sharing sound in their everyday lives, and with their knowledge and passion for new technologies and using social media to reach and influence people all over the world, their support will be invaluable.” See? Things we do, like, totally affect the future! Ahhhhhh.
But seriously folks, the growth that SoundCloud is experiencing right now is kind of nuts. Only two months earlier, Ljung apparently reported that the company had just surpassed 4 million users. Even more crazily, it had a measly 1 million in May 2010. EVEN MORE CRAZILY, it blew up from 2 to 3 million in only 97 days. So maybe consider posting the message “congrats SoundCloud Dudez!!!!!” on one of your roommate’s new “sample heavy” loop tracks the next time she shoves one down your throat using SoundCloud.
• SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com
• Ashton Kutcher: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005110