Introduction
SoundCloud can be an excellent way to boost your exposure and attract followers if you’re an aspiring artist. With over 175 million users monthly and growing exponentially, this site has been used by many artists, producers, and singers, as a handy music marketing tool. The excellent features of SoundCloud are attracting a massive following of listeners. More the listeners, more the exposure; therefore, better the visibility on the site with their impressive AI feature. It automatically creates a playlist according to the listener’s music behavior by analyzing their listening history.
But it is tough to be heard by most of the audience, among the sea of diverse artists. Be sure to check out the seven tips on how to get more listeners on SoundCloud, which will surely help you stand out of the box.
1. Use SoundCloud Ads
You can always promote SoundCloud tracks to expand your organic reach. SoundCloud Ads, also known as Promoted Tracks, can be purchased by artists. It includes a mixture of radio-style audio ads, mobile advertising, native advertising apps, and websites. Thousands of independent artists have used this method of best SoundCloud promotion for their tracks to get successful results.
However, ads can get expensive. Yes, pretty expensive!
You must invest a lot of money in ads for boosting SoundCloud plays. This option may not be feasible for several non-established and upcoming music artists. But as an upcoming artist, one should also learn how to monetize SoundCloud. So, let’s move on to the following method.
2. Post on Music Forums and Subreddit Sites
There are numerous music forums and sub-Reddit sites dedicated to music. To get more plays on SoundCloud, you need to make a lot of online buzz about your SoundCloud artist profile. The easiest way to do this is to post and distribute links to your profile and tracks on relevant music forums and sub-Reddit sites.
Many music lovers utilize these resources to explore new music and music artists. Additionally, they have a saturated audience base, according to music genres. Some laser-focused research to find the most relevant music forums and sub-Reddit sites in your niche can help you. Make a list of these sites and start posting your track links with proper descriptions to gain SoundCloud plays.
3. Buy SoundCloud Plays
It is hard for your music to be heard by industry professionals and record labels in the over-saturated music industry. To increase your visibility, you need to boost SoundCloud plays. It is critical to identify which user is playing your songs regularly. The more plays you have on your track, the more visible you will be online. If you struggle to get more SoundCloud plays and attract listeners to your songs, it can be advantageous to buy SoundCloud Plays. Buying Plays will increase your track ranking on SoundCloud automatic playlists.
While it is true that this pretty much equates to artificially inflating your play count, you will start gaining more authentic followers. SoundCloud Plays offer various services, and the prices vary according to the quality of the service. So, all you have to do is research before making a purchase.
4. Use Sponsored Tweets / Mentions
To play more on SoundCloud, tweeting links to your SoundCloud tracks offers a few benefits. Popular influencers can recommend that you have a massive following by using sponsored comments. However, this sometimes limits you to your current fans. Using sponsored mentions can help you get even more visibility for your music.
It systematically and rapidly acquires a large number of target audiences. Sponsored mention campaigns can cost you anywhere from $40 to several thousand, depending on size and scale.
5. Make a Music Video
Releasing songs in an audio format is great, but music videos are even better. It helps to get a better audience engagement as you get more views on SoundCloud. Consumers’ demand for video content is rising rapidly, and sharing music videos on your social media pages like Facebook, Instagram, etc. A link to your SoundCloud profile will be highly effective as a cross-promotional social media marketing strategy to get SoundCloud followers and increase SoundCloud plays.
Video content receives more shares and higher engagement than any other content on the web and streaming apps. Making a music video will also give your fans visuals to remember you and your music, directly benefiting you in the long run.
6. Use Facebook Ads
Posting songs on Facebook pages can be a great way to lead the audience to your SoundCloud profile. It will help you to get plays on SoundCloud and attract more listeners. And, just as you can promote your SoundCloud tracks via Twitter, you should also know how to promote your music via Facebook with the Facebook Ads campaign. Facebook ads facilitate proper campaigns by selecting location-based search trends to get better results to be considered one of the best SoundCloud promotions. This will improve the visibility of your Facebook posts and will ultimately lead to more listeners.
For example, you have to focus on EDM fans. Go to Google Trends website and search “EDM.” The site will show the location-wise search volume of the currently trending keywords aligning to EDM. You have to set the location on your Facebook ad campaign to show your ad in the selected area, resulting in better engagement.
7. Comment on Related SoundCloud Tracks
If you’re an upcoming music artist, strive to find and connect with other music artists within your niche. The easiest way to do so is to comment on other artists’ tracks on SoundCloud. This will help you create new relationships with other artists. You will also enhance your visibility, get views on SoundCloud and expand your reach within the SoundCloud community.
However, the key here is to leave high-quality comments on other artists’ tracks. You have to show a genuine interest that is constructive and appreciative.
How to get more Plays on SoundCloud
Receiving SoundCloud plays isn’t a piece of cake, as thousands of artists join the stage every day, and the competition continues to grow. But calm yourself down because the following tips will help you get plays on SoundCloud if you apply them correctly. Come on, let’s begin.
- Use existing audience – To get more plays on your track, you first need to use your recent audience well. Study your audience and try to get more plays from them. To do this, you have to understand their likes and dislikes.
- Email is still important – Yes! Promoting your tracks is a great way to get more SoundCloud plays. People use many different methods to promote their content, but they almost always forget to email. Email is a formal communication medium, but it can certainly be used for promotion.
- Repost Chain – You who have no idea what a repost series is, a group of artists, collaborators, or producers repost each other’s tracks on SoundCloud to get more exposure and play.
- Make your track noticeable – If your track is not a bit different and catchy than other tracks in your genre, then you will continue to get as much drama as you are getting now. To get more real SoundCloud plays, you need to make your tracks more noticeable and unique in quality and customization.
- Use Relevant Tags – Tags are essential elements that make your track noticeable. Inserting relevant tags into your track will make it easier for the SoundCloud algorithm.
- Meta Data is a Must – Your track’s metadata is also an essential factor in making your track noticeable. Always make sure you have filled in all the information required in the fields When you upload a track.
- Mention the Mood and Genre of the Track – To make sure your songs appear in search results for a specific genre, you’ll need to specify the genre and mood of your track. So, whenever you search for music of your genre, your tracks also appear in the search results, and you get more plays from the audience.
- Organize Your Playlists – Create playlists on your SoundCloud account based on the genre and mood of the songs. So, if someone wants to listen to a specific genre all night long while working, they put it on your playlist. Not only will there be more drama in this, but you will also be known as a master in your style.
- Engage with Other Creators – You must expand your community and connect with other creators to get more drama. Meeting other creators helps you learn new things about making music and also helps you get more exposure.
- Release Consistently – Good content is essential, but it doesn’t matter without consistency. Your audience constantly needs something new, and you need to release songs to meet that need continually. If you want to get more plays on SoundCloud, you must continuously upload your songs.
Now we are sure you know how to get more plays on SoundCloud. Now let’s see how to promote music on SoundCloud.
8 Tips for Promote your Music on SoundCloud
1. Sync up your social media
The more consistent and coordinated your social media strategy is, the better your music will perform on SoundCloud. There’s a spillover effect for building audiences across different platforms: You upload your music to SoundCloud, release videos on YouTube, develop your visual brand on Instagram, and get personal with your fans on Twitter.
2. Check out your demographics
The major DSPs all provide detailed first-party analysis about performance on their platforms (including SoundCloud). This data provides important insights into your audience that inform your marketing strategy.
3. Collaborate
You can collaborate in two different ways. If you produce music yourself, it might be a good idea to sell (or give away some of your beats for free) to active up-and-coming rappers on SoundCloud — but make sure yours sound great. Will work with their flow and vice versa.
4. Remix fellow artists
There are two different ways to work remixes into your SoundCloud promotion strategy. First, you can add your unique style to an already popular song; this is a great way to expose your style to a new audience and connect with new fans. Remixing is another form of collaboration and interaction with fellow artists and fanbases.
5. Interact with others
There are easier ways to network in the music world than to acquire features or remixes. Interacting regularly with fans and other artists will help you establish your presence on stage and eventually expose you to a new audience.
6. Fix your SoundCloud settings
Take a few simple steps to your SoundCloud account to increase listenership or drive traffic to other platforms like Spotify. First, you can set your content to stream only. This will limit the virginity of your music, preventing your listeners from downloading songs (and re-uploading them across the web) – but conversely, your stream count is likely to increase.
7. Fix your SoundCloud and Google SEO
An important part of your marketing and branding strategy is making sure that audiences quickly recognize your music and find you across multiple platforms.
8. Go Pro
SoundCloud Pro puts many valuable tools in your hands to increase revenue, improve your marketing strategy, and distribute your music. Pro is the way to go if you’re serious about the platform.
Conclusion
In other words, “Great Song!” or “Nice Track!” is not going to get you the attention of the artist. Your comments must reflect your knowledge and cultivate a positive reputation on the site and artist’s mind.
Remember, every comment you leave is an essential footprint for a new listener to get to your artist page.
I hope that helps you!
We will discuss more on independent brand development of music artists on different social sites soon on our upcoming blogs.
Stay tuned and keep groovin’!