I don’t know if you’ve heard of SoundCloud before but it is really fantastic. They are a German based company supplying a place for artists to put their work out there for free. You can upload your own songs, your favorite spoken word pieces, poems, your own work or a podcast. The sound quality when recording your own stuff is amazing. I recorded this clip on my iPhone in just a few minutes…check it out…

I’ve been using SoundCloud to discover new music as well. Some artists are posting their music directly to the site so they can get it out and control access to it before it comes out to the public. My favorite artist Robyn is one of the artists that embraced the technology early on. You can see she’s got a lot of her public work posted as well as some personal mixes she did including this beautiful piece remaking Prince’s When Doves Cry:

Artists and DJ’s can mix their own songs and post almost immediately to get their sounds out. I love this mix of Lady Antebellum and Lady Gaga…You can even download some of the mixes for free and listen when you want! And people can comment on the song at whatever time they want..it’s pretty immediate in it’s ability to provide feedback.

You can also find great spoken word articles from some of your favorite websites just by searching. LifeHacker.com posts great stuff from their website that is an easy listen and enjoyable. Check out their latest posting…

So if you’ve never heard of SoundCloud…get over there and discover it. If you’ve not been there in a while, go look at all the new stuff and new features. I think it’s worth a look and get the iPhone and/or iPad app for further enjoyment!