14 DAY TRIAL // SoundCloud is an interesting startup focused on online music, if only because it seems to be actually successful while not at the mercy of the record companies. The startup is now rumored to be raising some "significant capital" from a number of interested venture capital firms.
According to AllThingsD, Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures are leading the new funding round and that several companies were very interested in investing in SoundCloud.
The Berlin, Germany-based startup last raised $3.3 million from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures last year and that round, apparently, hasn't closed yet.
There are no details on the exact sum of the latest investment and the companies rumored to be involved didn't comment.
SoundCloud stands out from the number of online music platforms in that it focuses on becoming a platform for artists, big and small, to host, promote and share their music.
This artist-centric approach seems to have worked as it starting to become a replacement for MySpace Music in its hay-day when everyone had to present on the social network.
Unlike MySpace Music, the focus is actually on the music, though the social features are a big part of the experience.
Users can follow others, Twitter style, to receive updates like new tracks as soon as they become available.
If you're a budding artist, it can be a great platform for getting some recognition, or just hosting your music. The recognizable embedded player, with built-in wave visualizer, is great for getting your music on your blog or website.
And the website itself, with more than one million users, is becoming large enough to jump-start a career by itself.
The site has been largely free of copyright issues that have plagued most other sites that enable users to upload music. Even so, it plans to add some fingerprinting technology to keep out illegal copies.