All artists want their work to be appreciated, shared, and well-received. To reach the right audience, you must market your art well. Choosing the right virtual platform to showcase your art is the first step towards this goal. After that, it is all about how you plan your marketing strategies.
SoundCloud is one of the largest audio streaming platform for any artist who is serious about making a name for themselves in the music industry. Whether you are an established artist or a newbie, you are sure to find a foothold on the World Wide Web if you promote your music well here.
SoundCloud can bring your music exposure. Music brands, production labels, magazines, and TV channels are continually scouting the platform for talent. It can bring your art to thousands of listeners across the globe at minimum cost to you, depending on whether you choose to monetize your tracks or not. The success of your tracks will rely mainly on the number of SoundCloud plays they generate; hence, it is essential to market your tracks well.
How Are Plays Registered for Your SoundCloud Tracks?
A listener does not necessarily need to have a SoundCloud account to play your tracks. This makes the platform versatile and appealing to a wide range of audiences. Every play count in real-time gets registered in the tracking system employed by SoundCloud for your tracks. Hence if you plan your account activities well, you can profitably monetize your music while getting it to reach its intended audience and beyond.
How Should You Plan Your Marketing Tactics on SoundCloud?
Here are 5 of the best strategies to promote your music on SoundCloud:
Use Promotion – the In-Built Service of SoundCloud:
Promote on SoundCloud is a self-service promotional tool. You can use it for advertising your tracks and bring your work greater visibility among SoundCloud’s huge community. Using this wisely is sure to get your music the required exposure. As the service caters to the real user community, it is sure to drive up activities on your tracks organically. You can expect more listeners to play your tracks, share them, save them or comment on them. Here is how you set up a promotion on your SoundCloud account:
- Name your promotion.
- Select the track you want the traffic to engage with. This track must be a public, monetizing track.
- Next, select the type of outreach you require. You have the option of choosing between Simple or Advanced targeting.
- Specify your budget for the promotional experience.
- Then, you will be prompted to set the start and end date for the promotion.
- Choose your audience type and move on to purchase the promotion.
When you check your cart out, you will be able to look at the availability of the promotion you have customized for your track.
This service promotes your track by putting it at the top of your audience’s homepage or stream. The visibility ensures that the track has a high potential of being discovered, clicked upon, and listened to. Even listeners who do not join your followers immediately are likely to save the track and listen to it again. A good track will make the listener curious about your other tracks and bring you organic traffic, giving your music a better opportunity to be discovered.
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Integrate A Cross-Platform Marketing Approach:
Although SoundCloud has a wide virtual reach on its own, it is always a good idea to spread your advertising techniques across platforms. Recent changes in the platform’s look have ensured that the homepage no longer contains your personal stream. This makes finding tracks slightly difficult for your followers. You could invest in services that offer to market for you, or plan this out on your own. However, promote yourself simultaneously over social media accounts, email blasts, and other music platforms to ensure you are getting the highest clicks possible on your music streams. Some markets that you can tap into include the ones created by:
- Blogs;
- Emails;
- YouTube Channels;
- Spotify or ApplePlaylists;
- Influencers (this includes megastars as well as micro-influencers; they may be running their own vlogs, or maybe using Instagram accounts for the purpose);
- Radio stations (some even play directly off SoundCloud, thus getting you additional Plays!);
- Playlisters.
Remember that you know best what suits your style and genre of music, plan your cross-platform presence accordingly. What works for one artist may not work for another. If reaching out works personally better for you, keep a list of emails and numbers handy. Organize this mailing list and schedule messages and occasional greetings that get sent out to the people on your list. Remember to keep your note simple, honest, and follow up when needed. Include a downloadable and shareable link to your track in the box of your text/ email/message. Keep in mind not to disturb anyone who explicitly tells you not to send promotional messages. If you offer your listener an option to subscribe to your emails and updates, you must allow them to unsubscribe if they feel like doing so.
Make Your Tracks Easy to Discover:
This follows from the point above. You can only leverage your existing audience by cross-posting and sending emails. How do you get the regular surfer on SoundCloud to convert into your listener? The answer to that is simple. Get your tracks more visibility. You can make your tracks discoverable by:
- Getting your existing audience to share and repost your track.
- Using appropriate and relevant keywords to label your tracks with.
- Actively follow channels and genres relevant to your music so you can get your music reposted to attract a wider audience.
- Using the descriptor wisely, label your music genre, type, and mention all relevant tags. Mention credits and provide lyrics when applicable.
- Using images to your advantage. Visuals appeal to casual browsers. While it may not always be cost-effective to create videos for all your soundtracks, it helps to have a visual. You could use compelling images, sound holographs, or PowerPoint captions. The possibilities are endless and limited only by your imagination.
- Keeping your presentation style consistent, especially when it comes to writing the description for the tracks. A consistent tone of introducing your track is also a way to build your brand image.
- Taking care of the metadata is crucial as this is what will make your tracks appear on search engines beyond SoundCloud’s personal interface. For this purpose, organize your tracks well:
- Keep tracks sorted using playlists.
- Name your tracks and playlists.
If you are uploading your music to an editorial or label account, give the tracks identifiable titles that include descriptions like “Artist Name – Track Title”. This will give both your music and your brand exposure in addition to making it discoverable. Ensure the artist is identified and a track isn’t attributed just to the SoundCloud account.
If your music is a piece of collaboration, include names of collaborators and guest artists in the title. This will further expand your audience reach in addition to making it more discoverable.
Take Feedback Seriously:
Online reviews of your music can make or break your business in the music industry regardless of what genre your work caters to. To market your tracks wisely, you need to be able to reinforce the positive comments your work generated and take traction off the negative ones. The best way to do that is by deleting content that brings your reputation harm. An even better way to react to the criticism would be to work on the track and bring its standards up.
A great advantage of SoundCloud is that you can take down tracks that do not do well and alter them. You can also put-up tracks that aren’t completely ready to get initial feedback. Artists often tend to overestimate their own work. It is hence prudent to let your work face critical audience response so you can improve your music. There are many ways to analyze how your audience receives your tracks. Some of these are:
Direct conversations
Comments
Algorithm Analytics
Let your followers, or a select group of listeners, hear your track. Ask for their opinions and advice.
SoundCloud allowed listeners to leave comments on your published stream, much like several social networking platforms. Pay heed to what listeners are saying.
SoundCloud has its own play counts tracker. You can figure out what works and what not for your audience by observing the graphs for all your work.
When you do receive feedback, remember to be polite and thank the reviewer no matter what kind of review they leave. In case you edit your track and repost it, giving your reviewer a shout-out will bring you goodwill and help create organic traffic. Everyone loves responsive artists, especially ones who keep the audience’s interests at the heart of their art.
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Invest in Businesses that Sell Organic Services to Boost Your Tracks:
A quick and easy way to boost your listener count is to buy Plays and Followers. However, this may not necessarily be the safest way. Fake counts can get you into trouble. You may find yourself banned from the platform for suspicious or fraudulent activity. To avoid such a scenario, do your research well before buying likes, plays, or followers. Make your purchases from trusted services, and remember to buy organic. This is because only real plays and other types of activities on your tracks will actually be beneficial to your account. A trusted service will let you track your promotional growth, giving you insights on where and when your tracks generated audience activity.
Conclusion
If you keep these strategies in mind, you will soon be able to increase the number of likes, plays, and followers on SoundCloud. Be patient, consistent, and productive. Smart promotion strategies may require some investment, but it is possible to create your niche without burning a big hole in your pocket. With the right game-plan in motion, your music is set to get discovered by listeners, channels, producers, production houses alike. However, it would be best if you remembered that you have to let your music be its own Brand Ambassador in addition to the above. Never compromise on the quality of the content you upload to your account.
No matter how long you may have been in the game, it would help if you remembered good music speaks for itself. If your tracks have quality and uniqueness, they will generate organic play counts. Even if your initial marketing reaches a few listeners, your audience will want to share and repost links to the track if your music speaks to them. On the other hand, mediocre work may generate initial hits out of curiosity (and due to marketing ploys), but listeners are bound to fall out eventually.
No one wants to share poorly made tracks. Take your time and put your heart and soul into creating content that speaks. This will only result in a genuine rise in your play counts and the number of followers. Music lovers are continually browsing through SoundCloud for quality music. Great music will find listeners even with bad promotional tactics. That said, use insights to your advantage, keep your account professional and consistent. So, think up your strategies well and get the ball rolling!
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