SXSW Q&A: SoundCloud’s Dave Haynes

Glenn Peoples
Updated ·2 min read


SoundCloud’s Dave Haynes @ SXSW (Photo: Glenn Peoples)

On T-shirts, posters and stickers, SoundCloud logo – a cloud – was a familiar site around downtown Austin during SXSW Interactive. Billboard.biz ran into Dave Haynes, SoundCloud’s VP Business Development, on Red River Street after a music-tech meetup and talked about the buzz app of SXSW 2012 and how SoundCloud used its time at SXSW.

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Billboard.biz: Did any apps blow your mind at Interactive?
Dave Haynes: I don’t think there’s been anything that’s broken out this year – or nothing that I’ve seen. I saw the Highlight app, which I was really excited about. I used it a bit in London, where it was a bit more exciting. It’s all about serendipitously meeting people you might have a connection with through someone else. The only thing is if I’m at SXSW, I know a lot of people already so I’m only one step removed by just asking someone where someone is. But I think I will probably continue using Highlight when I’m back in London.

SoundCloud had a lot of open house events. What came out of those?
With the SoundCloud open house we didn’t really want to come to SXSW and do a bit party or be the company that was bragging about what we’re doing. We have so many partners that are integrated with us now that really add value to the ecosystem around sound that SoundCloud is building. We really just wanted to celebrate that. We have an app gallery at SoundCloud.com/apps. The idea of the open house was to create a physical format of the app gallery. It was us there but we really wanted to highlight the 10 or 12 companies that we work with – everyone from this really awesome journalism app called Storify, where you can drag sounds to tell a story, all the way through to people like Next Big Sound or WebDoc.

Did you see any music?
Actually I haven’t seen any music at all. Most years I do Interactive and Music. For me Interactive is about learning and meeting new people. And quite often music is to enjoy myself and I go out see new bands. But this year for SoundCloud we were focusing on the Interactive section. Music, I think we have a big footprint there.

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