Maybe you haven’t hit that first hundred or first thousand or even first ten thousand and in my opinion SoundCloud is still going to be super valuable. So this article is all about how you can gain traction and gain followers on SoundCloud in 2019. Let’s go so it’s 2019 and streaming is becoming more and more popular for music.
There’s SoundCloud, there’s Spotify, there’s Apple music. There’s all these different platforms. However, in my opinion, SoundCloud is still one of the most vital ones, because in a lot of ways it’s still the only kind of social network of music. You have Spotify, you have all these other ones, but SoundCloud is the only one where you can really comment. Communicate interact with your fans, interact with artists, you want to message and be in contact with, and I still think SoundCloud is still very valid.
It’s still very good, and you know who knows two months from now six months from now they could figure their stuff. Oh and they could still become one of the most popular platforms for music, especially underground music. So let’s just get into these ten tips now the first one doesn’t have to do with SoundCloud itself has to do with you and its quality. The quality of your music is going to be absolutely vital for standing out on SoundCloud SoundCloud.
You have to just dig through a constant pile of crap and, in my opinion, the only music that is going to continuously hook. People in is high quality music. Now, I’m not saying you have to be Skrillex or phlume or Diplo, or you know any of these levels of musicians. But what I recommend doing is listen to listening to your favorite artists, artists. You aspire to sound like or you think you sound like and really objectively try and look at it and see if you are 80 % as good as they are.
I would say to succeed on Soundcloud and to stand out. You really have to be at least 80 % as good as the people you aspire to sound like, and if you don’t honestly, I think you’ll just get forgotten and your music will quickly fall into the pile and you’re not going to stand out. And it’s just going to be a lot of effort when I think spending that time on social media could be better spent on trying to grow your skills versus that so step one before you really even think about getting yourself on soundcloud.
I would make sure your music is about 80 % as good as those of you aspire to sound like quality. So you can put your best foot forward now. Tip number two goes into the whole quality versus quantity debate and it comes down to quantity or more so consistency. I think consistency is very important. A song has a specific lifespan and it’s actually starting to get shorter and shorter. But what I mean by that and what I mean by the lifespan of a track is say: you put out a new track well over the course of say a month and even a short is now three weeks even two weeks, even one week in the day And age of music, we live in it kind of has a lifespan where you gain all this traction, maybe get YouTube.
Support blog support, support from your friends. You gain this new attention for it, you gain these followers. You gain these fans, you gain these listens and it reaches a peak and then it quickly steeply starts to cut off and the track quickly becomes forgotten for the most part in this day and age of music. Unless, of course, it’s a masterpiece and it’s a it’s a very standout song, but for the most part musics just going to go up, have a lifespan and it’s going to go down now.
If you’re, putting one song out every two months, you’re not going to stand out and you’re going to quickly be forgotten, just think about you as a listener. How many new artists are always on your radar, new music and how many of them to you really stand out and are ones you keep going back to and very likely it’s only the ones where they’re constantly in your face constantly providing you with a new song And for personally, I’m just speaking personally here, it takes about 4 to 5 songs from artists for that to kind of click in my head and be like.
Oh, I like this artist. This is an artist. I want to follow and pay attention to say. For example, I don’t know an artist I I recently fell in love with would be like bad computer, whose releases a lot on monstercat. I heard one song of his. I really liked it and I gave him a follow in the hopes that maybe he’ll put out more stuff that I’ll really like. And luckily I followed him around the time where he started to consistently release on monstercat, probably once a month, and those songs were just constantly on my radar, like good new song, good new song, good new song and that solidified him to me.
As one of my favorites, while there could be another artist where they put out a single and it’s like one of the best singles I’ve ever heard, but if they don’t put something out, I’m going to quickly forget about them and not consider them. One of my favorites one of those go-to artists, one of those artists that, if they played in my town, I’d, want to go see or one of those artists that I’d follow on Soundcloud form or I would eventually go through my soundcloud followers and be like.
Oh, I got the single from this person, I’m not going to follow them anymore unfollow, so you need a really good balance of quality and consistency, and it might take a while to get to that point where your skills are at the point where you can write At least one quality song and release it per month, but I recommend the quicker you can do that. The quicker that, consistent that that lifespan can build on itself, because once your track hits the peak of its plays and follows, then you drop that next track and every all those new people who just start paying attention to you are going to listen to that new Song and it’s going to keep going up, you’re going to keep going up instead of kind of getting a bunch of new followers and some of them disappearing or not interacting with your work anymore.
So number two was consistency. Now number three is a little less useful in 2019, but I still wouldn’t rule it out and that is download gates. Now, if you don’t know how to download gate, a download gate is a website in a a technique that you can use to set up a download for your song, where, when someone downloads your song, instead of asking for money, you ask for some sort of social Currency and that could be a SoundCloud follow.
That could be a Facebook light, and in this case, because we’re doing SoundCloud follows in SoundCloud growth, you do it for a SoundCloud follow, maybe even a repost, maybe even a comment, because a bunch of comments on your track will make it look really good and give Social proof to the fact that your track is worth listening to and people like it, so those are going to be websites like the artist Union tone.
Den hive fan gate, there’s there’s so many right now, they’re so easy to set up, and it’s it’s really as easy as you set up a download gate for a track go to any of those websites, easy breezy. And then, when someone wants to download your track, they’ll have to like it repost it follow you, and hopefully that repost and that follow will either lead them to listening to more of your music in the future or that repost getting the attention of others and the Reason I say it’s still valuable is even though the average listener is probably just streaming your track, putting it in a playlist putting it in their favorites DJs and people who still like to collect songs on their computer, primarily DJ’s are still going to want to download Your music, I know myself whenever I have a show coming up.
I probably download like a hundred new songs, and I have to go through those download gates pretty much for every single one I buy very little music or maybe a third to a quarter while most of the music I’m still going through a download gate to acquire. So this is going to be super beneficial because you’re going to get reposts you’re going to get likes, you can get favorites, maybe even comments, and it can take a track that has no traction and if it’s good enough people will download it and it will get Traction so I recommend still using to download gates in 2019.
Now the next technique is using download gates for stuff other than music and providing values, and what I mean by that is: yes: you’ll have DJ’s that use download gates, but that’s still very few. However, one way down low gates are still really valuable is to provide some sort of value for your audience or prospective audience, be it through a sound through a sample pack. Maybe you write a blog that can only be accessed through a download gate.
So what you can do is you can create a really desirable item, property of some sort, sample, packs presets inside look article. I could you can get really creative with it and you can actually put it behind a download gate where someone has to use a download gate to access it, and this is actually how I got a lot of my following and how cymatics the company I used To work for gained a ton of their following is where, if you want to download a sample pack, if you want to download preset something like that, you have to use a download gate or stems.
If someone wants to remix your song or something like that, they have to use this download gate and for me that gets way more downloads than a song to a download gate. So tip number four is provide value for your audience and put that behind it download Gate where they have to then follow you repost it or something like that now tip number five for growing. Your soundcloud is going to be repost trading or joining repost circles.
Now there’s two sort of different things here. The first is repost trading, where you can go to websites which I think like repost Network or things like that, where you can essentially put your song up on there and you can kind of get asked for a bid. Essentially that where someone can offer to repost it for you reposting one of their songs and the reason I say bid, because a lot of times has to do with how many followers you have so like.
I have a SoundCloud with 15k, so I can ask an account with 15k to do a trade, for example, and then I just you know, select their song hit, yes, make an offer. If we agree, I don’t even have to do any of the work it’ll actually manually, do it for you for 24 hours, so if you’re, really new to SoundCloud using these websites to just create all these repost trades and get songs to repost is really useful because Reposting on Soundcloud is, in my opinion, one of the best things and worse things about it and my opinion kind of ruins SoundCloud because it kind of ruined your feed and it ruined the cleanliness of just following people.
You like, however, I’m not going to avoid the elephant in the room I’m going to take advantage of it, so I’m going to use websites like that to set up these repost networks. Now, on top of that, you can also set up repost networks with your friends. If you have friends who are all producers create, like a a group, chat a discord, something like that, where every time one of you releases a song, all of you are going to repost it periodically, and that way you can join forces with your friends, and everyone Gets each other’s support every time you put out a song cuz, it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere and it can be just a great way to start snowballing and get the attention you want that you yourself may not have with a brand new or very small Soundcloud, the next tip is going to be using your other social media.
Now this may seem very obvious, but using your Twitter, your Facebook, your Instagram, your snapchat, to push a song when it when it’s out is very beneficial. Now my main order word of advice here, though, is to grow those social media or social media separately, and not just making those a self promotional platform. You want to give people a reason to follow your Facebook, a reason to follow your Instagram, a reason to follow your Twitter, so you want to be providing value content on those platforms that isn’t just always here’s my soundcloud link, here’s my soundcloud link because nothing is Going to get you unfollowed or liked quicker, however, that being said, those social medias are going to be a great way to just get that initial traction, especially your personal Facebook account, because your other social media is probably going to be as small as your soundcloud or Within the same range, but your personal Facebook has your friends and they already interact with you and communicate with you not to mention you can private message: people you can private message.
Your best friends give them a song, ask them for support and, if you’re fairly new, to growing a sound fairly new to growing social media over all your friends are very likely to support you now. Someone like me, who’s been at it for five years. If I sent people links they’re so tired of seeing it, so it’s probably not very effective, but this tutorial isn’t for people who have been on South Club for five years.
This is people who are just growing and some people who are pretty much starting 2018-2019 so use your other social media to grow your soundcloud. The next tip is going to be YouTube promotional blogs to grow your soundcloud, so on YouTube. There are tons of blogs that exclusively upload other people’s music and what you can do, every time you put out a song is you can connect with these blogs? They usually have submission emails in their About section, collect dozens of them in a spreadsheet email them all.
Personally, one by one, and even if just one picks it up, and they include your download gate in the description say, your song got a thousand to ten thousand plays on one of these blogs, which is very realistic. You know some of these blogs can do very well and, let’s even just be conservative, let’s say you got a thousand plays, even if one percent of that thousand decided to actually download the song.
So one in a hundred plays that’s still ten more followers than you had the day before, and ten followers is a big deal. You shouldn’t take that for granted. So using YouTube’s promotional networks to actually get your music heard is very beneficial and I recommend using a promo strategy and having a promo plan every time you release a song or maybe you’re, hitting them up two weeks before you’re telling them hey my songs.
Coming out. This date, would you be interested you’re, starting to communicate with these people and find out who they are on a personal level. Building connections with them YouTube is still a very valid way of promoting music in 2019, and I still highly recommend it, especially with YouTube music becoming a thing where now people will actually be listening to and streaming music through YouTube music specifically and then, if they ever Choose to download it or see your name and like it it’ll probably convert.
However many even however little will convert to followers on Soundcloud. The next step is going to be joining the community. So one of the things I was preaching in the beginning that I like about SoundCloud, is it still very much a social network you’re still very much communicating reposting, commenting private messaging, all these things and if you join the community and you start to find artists and Participate in their work, they’re so much more likely to check yours.
Oh now, I’m not recommending to go to you know a huge producer and spam their song with comments to check out your work, but I recommend finding musicians around your level and giving them really constructive. Creative or kind feedback that you truly mean listen to their music, tell them what you liked about it tell them what you think maybe check out a couple of their songs. Don’t ever ask them to check out yours, but just be a part of the community and participate in their work and you’re more likely to build a community and have people to start to connect with yours, one of my best friends in the world, Sam winter him And I actually met on soundcloud and he’s actually from Ottawa, and this was back when you’re both started, and I was doing just that.
Every day I was like grinding, I was just like finding music and I was participating. I was communicating, he was one of them. We started private messaging years later. He moved to live with me in Vancouver and we started a business. I eventually worked for cymatics and lived together for like a year and a half, so you never know you know. Being part of the community is a great way to just start to build your inner circle and just really grassroots connect and build a community from the ground up and lastly, I recommend branding and when I say branding I mean really perfecting how your soundcloud looks.
You want really clean links, a really clean bio, taking advantage of the image and the header on top of it, having a really good name. That’s really easy for people to search and remember memorable song names that are probably related and ideally even a consistent, sound or style. Now, if you’re still really new musician, you may still be finding that so don’t hurt yourself and beat yourself up too much about finding that.
However, I just really recommend the sooner you build a brand. You build a consistent, sound, a style and aesthetic something that really sticks in people’s minds when they see it. It’s going to help people want to follow you and will recognize your song in their feed and are more likely to check it out again later, so there we go guys. That was ten tips on how you can grow a SoundCloud in 2019. I still think SoundCloud is very valid and even if you’re just starting from Ground Zero, now it’s never too late and there’s still a lot of tips and tricks.
You can get to get that first hundred, first thousand, even first ten thousand followers on soundcloud. So I hope you guys got a lot out of this tutorial. I know it’s different than my typical music production tutorial. So if you liked it, let me know, I hope you guys got a lot out of it. My name is Cromartie thanks again and I’ll be back soon with another article peace
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