SoundCloud reins in five million users

Along with an investment from Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, SoundCloud is having a great year

SoundCloud, a social website for sharing sounds and songs, announced Wednesday that it has surpassed five million users. Impressively, the vast majority of new users came in the last year. Back in 2010, only one million people were using the site.

To match the milestone, SoundCloud has also received a “small investment” of undisclosed amount from A-Grade Fund, created by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, who have previously backed social shopping site Fashism and ticket search site SeatGeek. Though the amount isn’t known, Kutcher and Oseary have tended to make angel-sized rounds, in the $1 million area.

Not like SoundCloud necessarily needs the money. It just raised a reported $10 million round in January from Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures. That round was followed two weeks later by news that the company would be extending its operations from Berlin to San Francisco, a costly but beneficial move. Still, I imagine the company’s war chest remains strong.

SoundCloud celebrated the milestone by creating a cool image that shows smaller milestones in the company’s short history. Each of the smaller milestones serves to represent what the website is now trying to do with social sharing of audio. For example, official accounts created by professional musicians like Four Tet and Moby have always helped drive interest in the site.

But it’s not all about music, as evidenced by uploads of the “Christchurch earthquake coverage,” “the sound of ice melting,” and even Ashton Kutcher reading a poem written by his dad.

“At first, we were focusing on professional musicians,” said Alex Ljung, co-founder and CEO of SoundCloud. “But we’re building a sound platform that’s not just about music.”

“People share photos through Flickr and videos through YouTube, but sound hasn’t had a similar moment.”

While it might not feel as natural to record audio as it is to snap some photographs or shoot a quick video, SoundCloud’s growth from the past year proves that there is indeed a demand for the platform. And there’s only more room to grow.