Mushrooming SoundCloud hopes to be the YouTube of audio

Founded by Swedish entrepreneurs in 2007 as a “social sound platform,” a service called SoundCloud is having a moment; as of late last year, it had a growth spurt from 200 million to 250 million listeners.

What’s different about it from music services such as Spotify or iTunes? Rather than providing a place to listen to popular music tracks, SoundCloud is instead aiming to be a kind of YouTube for audio clips and songs. It even appears to be getting into the business of hosting podcasts with a beta service it’s currently testing.

SoundCloud simplifies the process for uploading, tagging and sharing audio files, and its visual signature, a bright orange play button with a sound file’s waveform next to it, has become common across the Web. Many musicians use it to host their tracks and share them with fans, and others are using it to host other kinds of audio.