SoundCloud used its own channel for this unusual memorial to reach out for a young generation, which is typical for SoundCloud. A generation, which doesn’t really remember the tragic events of the Berlin Wall. On TV you hardly get this target group.

For the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, SoundCloud launched The Berlin Wall of Sound – an acoustical reconstruction of the Berlin Wall. SoundCloud decided to create this audio-visual memorial on its platform, because its headquarter is located right on the former site of the Berlin Wall. Without the fall of the Wall SoundCloud wouldn’t exist. We recreated the Berlin Wall with sound. Typical for SoundCloud is that you see the sound wave form of the music. Core idea was an audio track with a sound wave form exactly mirroring the shape of the former Berlin Wall. The sound track is 7:32 minutes long, which is the exact time sound needs to travel the 155 kilometers of the original Berlin Wall. Tagged with the timeline of the track are not the SoundCloud-typical user comments but the victims of the Wall and the circumstances, time and place of their death. The Berlin Wall of Sound was the global landing page of SoundCloud for one week.

The Berlin Wall of Sound is an immersive audio experience. Listening to it is not easy and hard to stand. Ultra-low frequencies generated with an original 30 years old Soviet synthesizer create a feeling of discomfort. The audience literally feels the barrier of the Berlin Wall and its tragic events. In addition you could see an animation of the Wall surrounding Berlin parallel to the audio track on an embedded map.

Only four days after its launch the Berlin Wall of Sound was experienced by more than 100,000 people, liked by over 1,000 and appeared in over 400 blogs. The Berlin Wall of Sound was mentioned and cited by journalists of top-level media, influential musicians and news channels around the world. The idea was hitting the target: An unpopular topic became popular through pop culture media. The comments and tweets showed a change in the perception of SoundCloud: A shift from a solely music platform to a social platform about audio experiences also beyond music. Music channels posted it and even DJs used the track in remixes. It was listed by Germanys leading weekly newspaper Die Zeit as one of two remarkable events marking the 25th anniversary. Even the Federal Bureau for Civic Education Germany mentioned it.

The audio platform SoundCloud used its own features and tools to create an audio-visual memorial for the victims of the Berlin Wall. A more than 7 minutes long experience, made of original propaganda of German Democratic Republic politicians, voices of border guards – embedded in sounds and frequencies, that made you not just remember the events, but feeling them.