SoundCloud: A Case Study of a German Startup In 2007, founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss started SoundCloud to fill their need for a simple music sharing. Inspired by other streamlined media companies such as Twitter, Vimeo and Flickr, they felt that music had been left out of this innovative move towards technology-assisted collaboration. As co-founder Alex Ljung explains, "for us it was really, really annoying to collaborate with people on music - I mean simple collaboration, just sending tracks to other people in a private setting, getting feedback from them and having a conversation about that piece of music." (Van Buskirk) With this idea, they set out to create a space where people could share music and receive feedback in a way not offered by current music sharing sites. Now a global company with offices in Berlin, San Francisco, New York, London and Sofia has over 10 million registered users, with countless more directed to their site every day (SoundCloud). Going beyond music file sharing, the company now has a mobile application and several layers of options in profile, from free user to professional artist. With constant updates and a sleek design, SoundCloud has truly become one of the best websites for uploading, sharing and exploring music. SoundCloud revolutionizes music sharing. Ljung and Wahlforss were not the first to start a music sharing website or be successful in starting one, but they have proven to build on past companies in revolutionary ways. SoundCloud was founded in 2007 and became increasingly popular around 2009 (Robedhmed). Ten years earlier, in 1999, Napster had become one of the first websites to design a peer-to-peer music file sharing platform, with a... paper medium..."How SoundCloud is Avoiding Becoming the Next MySpace ." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, August 10, 2012. Web. March 10, 2014. ."SoundCloud Co-Founder Eric Wahlforss: “How We Built SoundCloud.”” European Startups, Entrepreneurship and Innovation News: Whiteboard. Np, nd Web. March 10 2014. "SoundCloud » The Official Blog of SoundCloud." SoundCloud. Np. Web. 10 March 2014. .Van Buskirk, Eliot. "SoundCloud Threatens MySpace as a Music Destination for the Twitter Age." Nast Digital, July 6, 2009. Web. March 10. 2014. .