From 50,000 Listeners to 175 Million: David Noël on Eight Years of Community at SoundCloud.
David joined SoundCloud in 2009, just a few months after launch. He shared what he learned building community at SoundCloud.
There are two consistent threads in David Noël’s life: music and bringing people together. At a young age, he started the first hardcore band in Eupen, a small town of 17,000 in eastern Belgium. His band inspired others to form their own, and the music scene started to swell. “Suddenly there were ten bands, and suddenly Eupen was on the map.”
David began to uses the Internet to connect with his favorite hardcore musicians around the world and bring them to Eupen. “All these bands had websites, and they all had their email addresses listed on the pages. I remember emailing with the drummer of my favorite band in Syracuse, New York, and saying ‘You should come play in my hometown!’”
His passion for music and cultivating community made David a natural fit at SoundCloud, where he was the first Community Manager and Community Evangelist.
While I was working on the Instagram community team, we closely followed what David and his team were up to at SoundCloud. Last summer I finally got the chance to sit down with David and ask about his eight years at SoundCloud.
Below are some highlights, adapted into written form from our in-person conversation. To hear the deep cut from David, listen to the interview on SoundCloud:
Bailey Richardson: What was your first day at SoundCloud like?
David Noël: My first day was in April or May 2009.
We were in a a rickety office with a rooftop in an old post office that had been turned into a photography gallery in the middle of Berlin. There were still bullet holes in the wall in the courtyard. They had to drill holes in the wall to put Internet into the office.
I walked in and what I saw was people who were so motivated about building great products for creators. They had this deep conviction about making a platform that helps creative people express themselves.
I walked in and what I saw was people who were so motivated about building great products for creators.
BR: How old was SoundCloud then?
DN: The private beta launched in 2008, and the public version went live in early 2009, so it was only a few months old. By that time it had around 50,000 registered users.
BR: Who were the first people using SoundCloud? How did you find them?
DN: The two founders both had backgrounds in music — Eric as an electronic musician and Alex as a sound designer. So they reached out to their friends and just asked, “Hey, can you just check this out? This might be valuable to you.” Electronic musicians are special because they are a type of creator who understands technology. They’re open and willing to test new things.
Electronic musicians are special because they are a type of creator who understands technology. They’re open and willing to test new things.
At the time, electronic musicians had to constantly move files around to give each other feedback or send songs to clients but there was no tool to do that well. You had MySpace, which was not designed for musicians. It was a social network first and then it accidentally became popular amongst musicians. And you had file-sharing tools like YouSendIt which had poor user experiences.
Eric and Alex wanted to find something in between those two worlds that made it easier for musicians to move music across the world. That’s how the idea was born.
BR: How did SoundCloud spread beyond that initial group of musicians?
DN: A lot of that had to do with the way SoundCloud was designed. It turned music from something very passive on the Web to something interactive because of the waveform.
Creators would bump into that waveform on Facebook and when they clicked “Play” something visual happened — they weren’t only listening to music, they were watching music play and watching people comment and have conversations about the track. That was a total breakthrough, because that didn’t exist before.
BR: The big breakthrough was making music visual?
DN: Making it visual and giving it a layer of interaction.
Then they also made music portable. At that time every artist was trying to get you to go to their MySpace page. Musicians would post and say, “Please come visit my page!” We flipped the dynamic around. Musicians could upload their track once, and bring it to where people already were — to WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace. So the virility was built into the product early on.
And finally it was about music, which is an emotional connector. It’s the biggest passion point many people have.
It was about music, which is an emotional connector. It’s the biggest passion point people have.
That combination was what created the magic, and that’s why it spiraled out out of Berlin, into London, into the global scene. Right away, they had 50,000 users.
BR: And that’s when you joined. What was your very first task at SoundCloud?
DN: I walked into the office and there were a thousand support emails that hadn’t been answered. That was where I started. I went through thousands of emails, thousands of tweets from the most frustrated users, the most pissed off users… everything. All kinds of emotions from all across the world.
I walked into the office and there were a thousand support emails that hadn’t been answered.
It was my first immersion into understanding the people using SoundCloud. What type of users are there? What do they care about? What are their hopes? What are their desires? What are their pain points?
BR: Do you remember any of those early emails?
DN: Oh yeah. People telling me the product was broken, sending in questions about how to use it, or sharing feature requests and feedback.
I basically became the interface between the world and the company. I was the sponge who absorbed all the water from the world, then squeezed it into the company at the right points.
I was the sponge who absorbed all the water from the world, then squeezed it into the company at the right points.
I had insight into everything that our company was doing —the product roadmap, our resourcing — and I knew what the user issues were. I would recognize patterns and communicate those to the product teams.
BR: How did you go about sharing insights from users with the SoundCloud product team?
DN: I wouldn’t say, “You should build this feature because people asked for this specific thing,” because designers and engineers don’t want to be told what they should build. They want to solve problems.
Designers and engineers don’t want to be told what they should build. They want to solve problems.
So I would say, “You know, people are really frustrated about the fact that they can’t do X.” That created an opportunity for the product and design team to think about, “Okay, what are the possible solutions for this issue?” We would end up at a solution that was not what the user had requested but solved their problem.
BR: Is the SoundCloud community team still close to the product team?
DN: Now we have community specialists who are extended members of product teams. They attend stand-ups and funnel key feedback issues.
The primary goal of that community point person is not to come in and have a super well-defined idea, but to share the community perspective. The product manager’s responsibility is then to try and synthesize all of that and make use of it.
The loud minority will always be loudest. It’s tempting to make that the law, but you have to factor in the silent majority and you have to factor in what the data tells you.
That synthesis is important. I’ve seen so many emails and tweets from people who were so pissed off about something. They’d say they were going to cancel their subscription or delete their account. Eventually I realized those were an expression of emotion in the moment. How often are people prepared because of a burst of emotion to delete years of building up relationships on SoundCloud and enjoying the product?
So it’s very important as you scale to balance what people say and what they do. The loud minority will always be loudest. It’s tempting to make that the law, but you have to factor in the silent majority and you have to factor in what the data tells you.
BR: In addition to supporting users and sourcing qualitative insights, early on you were also Soundcloud’s “Community Evangelist,” which used a very different skill-set.
DN: Yes. A lot of my work early was about listening, understanding, seeing what people care about. Then another element of it was around creating some sort of engagement.
I followed my intuition and thought, “We have great stories in our community that might be good use cases. Where do we put them?” So we started telling them on our blog, on Facebook, and on Instagram.
BR: This seems like a simple question, but why did you write stories about SoundCloud users?
DN: It’s about the idea that behind a track there’s a person. In the same way that on Instagram, behind the photo there’s a person. At the end of the day, creativity comes from a person.
For example, there was this composer in London who worked in a bank during the day and then at night he became this amazing soundtrack producer and composer. He would team up with people around the world and create orchestral layers on top of voice and art. That’s when magic happens in a community — when two people who have a relationship on the internet turn it into a creative collaboration.
That’s when magic happens in a community—when two people who have a relationship on the internet turn it into a creative collaboration.
A common mistake people make is they confuse community with another word for user base or they see it as a user acquisition tactic. For them it’s about the transaction and not about the person.
If community is just about acquiring users, there’s easier ways to do that. If community is just about creating a relationship between a business and a customer, that’s fine. Not everybody who joins a service or an app wants to be part of something bigger than just the service that they’re buying.
Not everybody who joins a service or an app wants to be part of something bigger.
BR: One amazing thing about the SoundCloud community is how they would meet in person. How did SoundCloud’s Meetup groups start to form?
DN: At the beginning, we organized the Meetups ourselves. We had one in London, one in Berlin in our office, and a few other cities.
We created a static webpage on SoundCloud.com — soundcloud.com/meetups — where we hard coded the events. I just remember thinking, “This is not gonna scale,” at the time, but we tweeted the page out, we blogged about the events, and people came.
I just remember thinking, “This is not gonna scale,” at the time, but we tweeted the page out, we blogged about the events, and people came.
Eventually, we moved the organizing to Meetup.com and became one of the top 10 largest Meetup networks in the world.
BR: What did people do at these Meetups? Did they listen to music?
DN: It was a total mix and that was the challenge.
At first, we were very hands-on. We had to communicate directly with organizers to work through what to do, how to do it, etcetera. Even to the point where these people would send us contracts to sign for big, 3,000-person venues and I was like, “No, no, no!” [Laughter]
We wanted to stay hands off and enable the community to do its own thing, but we also wanted to make sure that if users showed up to that, that they have a really good time because the Meetups were associated with our brand.
We wanted to stay hands off and enable the community to do its own thing, but we also wanted to make sure that if users showed up that they have a really good time because the Meetups were associated with our brand.
BR: How do you define Community work at SoundCloud now, eight years down the line with 175 million active listeners?
DN: In 2012, I went through this process of detachment. I was VP Community reporting to CEO, and Community was a big function. We had 20 to 25 people and were one of the biggest teams in the company, but it had become difficult to define who was responsible for what between the community team and the marketing teams, the business development teams…
What if Community wasn’t a function, but it was a principle?
So I stepped away from all of it for six months to see clearly. I had to look at where the company was going, what the priority was going into the new year, how we were organizing against that goal. I asked myself what’s best for the team, what’s best for the customer, and what’s best for the company?
Then I landed on an idea: What if Community wasn’t a function, but it was a principle? I ran with that framework and reorganized the teams around it.
BR: How did you make that shift—turning community from a function into a company principle at SoundCloud?
DN: We embedded community people on other teams — on business development, on marketing and communication. Then we built out community operations like copyright, trust and safety, and support as one distinct organization.
Going through that process of transitioning a team from a function to a principle liberated people. They have much deeper connections now across the company than when Community was a singular function.
BR: Ok, final question. If you were to walk back into that office in Berlin and walk up to your desk seven years ago, what’s the thing that you would say to your younger self?
DN: I would say worry less, and don’t take it so personally.
I had really internalized this connection to people. That deep care became unhealthy. You can’t please everyone. You can’t make things right for everyone. You can’t get all the work done that is there. You’re never as good as they say, and you’re never as bad as they say.
So worry less and I would say listen more. And don’t only listen to the loudest. Look at the data to learn about those who aren’t saying anything. Have a more informed view on things before you speak up.
BR: Awesome. Thank you so much.
DN: Absolutely.
Three highlights from David:
Don’t confuse Community with user acquisition or with brand-to-customer communication on social media. A community only exists when people want to “be part of something bigger than just the service that they’re buying.”
Make the people behind the posts real. As David said: “Behind a track there’s a person.” An essential function for anyone in a Community role is to bring to life the people behind the posts — to other users and to the employees who are building products for them.
Don’t just listen to the loudest. Beware the “loud minority” when absorbing feedback from a user community. Always validate the qualitative with the data.
Massive thank you to David for sharing his knowledge. Follow David at @david on Twitter, @david on Soundcloud, and be sure to check out his new podcast Role Models
This case study was produced by the team at People & Company.
We published a book, host a podcast, and we work with organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider as strategy partners, bringing confidence to how they’re building communities.