SoundCloud: Your Music Marketing Tool!

 

Music marketing in today’s time is present across every social media platform. There are a lot of cross-platform advertisements and strategies to help in the growth of musicians like you, with SoundCloud being one of the biggest platforms to publish and market your music publicly, with more than 76 million actively registered users, and close to 175 million monthly listeners. It offers you the music from creators you’ll probably find nowhere else on the internet, to the music from creators shining on the biggest of the platforms. 

If you’re here, I suppose you’re already in the final stages of your music, planning a release in the coming days. Even if you aren’t, no worries. Always good to plan ahead!

Researching on how to market your music through platforms like Spotify, Amazon Music For Artists, and now, you’ve stumbled upon Soundcloud too (you’re on the right path). Ascending and gliding above a crowd this massive surely needs a different set of Wings.

 

The Significance of SoundCloud

 

Did you know that Billie Eilish, Halsey, Tom Misch, Post Malone, and a lot more billboard-topping artists initially gained their numbers from Soundcloud? Yes, they did. And the best part? It’s a free and direct access platform, acting as a messiah for the budding musicians looking forward to entering the realm. With its massive crowd of performers, playlisters, and audience, this platform contributes as one of the biggest platforms to put your music on.

Fun fact: almost 12 hours of music would be uploaded globally on SoundCloud by the time you reach THIS word of the blog. 

Entering is always the easier bit, keeping up is where it all lies. Strategizing, data analysis, and planning your music marketing and growth is always a better option than just relying on mere hope after putting your music out. Here are a few things to follow to keep track on.

 

Plan Cross Platform strategies

 

Linking your social media platforms comes under the essentials of Music Marketing. YouTube videos and Youtube Shorts significantly help pull in more traffic. It doesn’t always have to be about a video, just the album art would do the trick as well. Stories, Live Sessions and Reels with hints of your Soundcloud are kind of luring new fans to your music too. Twitter updates for music and mentioning your profile at planned intervals is a lot helpful. Marking your presence is the essential lesson from this bit. 

 

Mingle with the Audience

 

Connecting with your audience is vital when you want to build a closer bond with your audience. Not only it mark your presence, but it makes you a normal human for your people, someone they can relate to and follow. Reposting, sharing, commenting, personal messages and even joining groups of your resonant community are also a few great ways to connect with newer people. Gauging everything that you post or act upon is something to keep in mind, we’re creating authenticity, not spam posts. 

 

Configure your Soundcloud accordingly

 

Music on SoundCloud can be marketed in two different ways, you can make the track downloadable and it’ll let the audience keep what you uploaded. This could let them create a stronger bond with your music but it also comes with a con of people using it without the proper rights. Or, it could be non-downloadable, and available to stream. This will be a disengaging point for some folks, but it will bring in more traffic to your account ultimately. 

 

 

There is also an option for putting your music behind a paywall. You can have your side projects, jams, and experiments freely available for the people, meanwhile keeping the long-term projects, a.k.a the good stuff for the people to pay and hear your exclusive content. This will also help you gather more views on your Spotify and other streaming platforms as well. 

 

Branding Your Content Well

         

If folks start to recognize your sound even without your face on the post, you’ve done a fine job at marketing your music across platforms. Proper branding plays a crucial role in terms of catching the common eye. For example, try deciding which one of the two seems more desirable, ‘Darling by HarshBarar98’ or ‘Harsh Barar - Darling’. Pretty sure we already know the answer. Presenting the captions and title in a more organized manner will always reap better results for you.

 

Proper tags, SEO friendly content attached to the music bring in more traffic as you’re unleashing the power of Google for yourself. Make sure you use it wisely. Stepping into the realm of metadata makes you pivot your reach to a further extent as well. 

 

Analytics

 

Just like every other big digital streaming platform, SoundCloud provides its users with all the analytics and demographics of the engagement with the profile. Planning your strategy according to the available insights always turns out to be helpful and profitable. 

 

The Wizardry of Collaboration

 

There is nothing more effective than collaborations when it comes to expanding your engagement exponentially. Featuring on SoundCloud allows the audience to exchange more easily and more effectively. Producers collaborate with rappers and vocalists, instrumentalists come together with different acts showcasing their own prowess and whatnot. The possibilities are endless. Giveaways are also a very common trait among artists on SoundCloud. That’s obviously through the kindness of their hearts, it helps them anyway. 

 

Remixes are an integral part of collaborations with other artists as well. For example, a producer would layer their own music over the artists they want to collaborate with, or a rapper finds a beat and he wants to work together. 

 

Get SoundCloud Pro

 

A little more help is appreciated by everyone. Soundcloud Pro comes with an arsenal of tools and more in-depth Analytics for the artist to plan their marketing and interacting strategies more precisely. Monetization of your music can be enabled here, it also provides a distribution deal to spread your music to various streaming platforms. 

 

 

A few tips to remember

 

• Keywords and Metadata will be your digital helper to get more engagement if used correctly. 
• Genres and Tags create your own persona and vibe, using tags will make your tracks appear when listeners search relevant genres. 
• Start conversations, connect, and create a deeper bond with your audience. It’s all a Quid-pro-quo. 
• Consistency and regularity are something the audience expects from you, for they need the serenading of a rhythm. 
• Plan your strategies to work in a cross-platform flow, for everything to grow simultaneously. 
• Limited Downloads and sneak peeks to the loyal fans in something that garners a lot of attention too. People get curious easily. 
• Make good use of Soundcloud Ads, they’re your bullets with maximum precision. Finding listeners through the analytics will surely help you find your further direction as well. 
• Fan-powered royalties can also be enabled to monetize your account too. 

 

SoundCloud offers Fan Powered Royalties to ensure that the fee reaches the artist itself rather than the pool method to distribute among artists. The pooling method meant the distribution from the lump sum of total revenues, which was much more favorable to the artists sitting at the top of the ladder. It works on certain criteria:

 

1. Number of Streams
2. Amount of adds watched
3. If the consumer has SoundCloud Pro

 

This program ensures the revenue generated by the artist reaches only to him, a boon for artists in their initial stages.

 

Final Words

 

So, it is safe to say that you have been handed the roadmap, stranger! Be sure to know that it’s the journey that you should embrace, because it is endless, no matter how fast you travel. Such is marketing too. All the best for your further releases there! 

 

We at GreaseRelease, have a bunch of curators on our network who are looking for new & exciting music to push on their massive playlists. If you make music and want to reach a wider audience, check out our submission platform and get a chance to reach millions of listeners! Submit your tracks now!