Simple Ways to Get Free SoundCloud Plays | SMMSUMO
Use your header image to highlight recent releases
The header image is displayed at the top of your page. Using this huge digital space to push your latest album, rather than just being a bland photo of your band or yourself. Here’s Lil Uzi Vert hyping his new album:
With new tracks from the album right there on his SoundCloud account you can be sure he gets more SoundCloud plays for free as people get curious about the new album. He also changed out his old profile picture for the new one he’s using to hype this album.
Insightful comments on other tracks
With a little bit of effort, almost anything online can be social media: The key is to be social! Making insightful, and relevant, comments on other artist’s tracks can help you:
- Get the attention of that artist. Maybe they’ll be your new tour mate!
- Gain the attention of the fans of that artist. They will join your audience too!
- Look like an expert in front of tastemakers. You may be the new artist they recommend!
The key is to make actual, useful, smart comments. People who make those throwaway ‘MY MUZIC TEH AWESOMEST!’ comments are ignored. No one likes those people!
Change URL/Username to ‘look official’
SoundCloud has a problem with people creating accounts to look like they’re someone famous when they’re not. They steal a bit of someone else’s fame to get a few plays. Watch what happens when I search for Beyonce on SoundCloud and click on the People tab:
You best be careful when you mess with the Beyhive! None of these are official accounts associated with Beyonce in any way. They’re all tributes, or downright ripping her off. There is one official SoundCloud account for Beyonce though, and it’s easy to spot:
The key to figuring it out is right there in the URL: SoundCloud.com/Beyonce. Whoever set up Bey’s SoundCloud purposely chose that URL to help fans know that it’s the official account. You need to do this for your fans as well.
Add links in Advanced Settings
The Advanced Settings tab isn’t too complicated. It allows you to simply add your social networks so that you can easily connect with your fans. The most important ones to add here are:
- Tumblr
- Google+
Add each one. You never know where you may connect with a fan on another network, helping you get plays every time you share one of your songs.
Follow your label, comment whenever they mentioned you
Your record label needs you, and they need to mention you. Whenever they upload and share one of your songs on SoundCloud you need to get on that track and comment! Your label is going to be followed by a wide range of people who could be fans of your music, but who haven’t heard of you. When they see you being active, and caring about your music, it gives them another reason to click ‘Play’ and listen to you.
Perhaps even better, it just may start a conversation with your label. Connecting with the person who manages the label’s SoundCloud could get them to share your tracks more often, and that’s a sure way to get more free SoundCloud plays!
Use the right tags when you upload
Tag spam is a big no-no. If your country band doesn’t sound anything like Shania Twain, don’t tag yourself as such. Creating tag spam is a big problem as it can turn fans off of your music when they could look for you in the future and find you at the right time.
The right kind of tags to use include:
- The actual genre of the specific song being uploaded.
- Any guest stars or featured artists.
- Your producer.
- Your record label.
Those four basics should be safe. Venturing outside of them could lead you to spam territory!
Collab with another artist on SoundCloud
Everyone loves a good collab! The hip hop community has been doing this for years, decades even, and you can use this technique regardless of your genre. The great thing about doing it through SoundCloud is that the two of you are even more capable of sharing each other’s audiences.
Here’s a track that J. Cole did with Nas. Cole shared it on his SoundCloud, and who shared it on his own SoundCloud account? Nas himself!
This type of exposure can prove invaluable in getting plays right now, and gaining fans for life.
Add in-progress or live songs to keep the account active
SoundCloud is not a radio station. It is an active social network featuring music and musicians. And just like any other social platform it needs to stay active to be effective. It’s hard to upload new music all the time that’s good, we’re not all Prince, but it is quite possible to upload:
- Live recordings
- In progress songs, great for getting feedback
- Podcast-style tracks
- Demos
In an effort to stay active. Being forgotten in today’s world of ‘what’s the news right now?!?’ world can happen faster than you think. Tiesto was once named the greatest DJ of all time, and he still uploads live tracks, entire sets even, to SoundCloud to keep his name on the mind of his fans
Do a Remix or Cover of a Popular Song
Musicians have been doing this to get attention for years. Remember walking by a bar late one night, hearing a song you know and love, and walking into that bar to listen to it? Cover songs have been helping new artists attract attention since basically the beginning of time. It works just as well, or even better if you tag it right, on SoundCloud.
Conor Maynard did a cover of Adele’s incredibly popular ‘Hello.’ He rode it all the way to 1.8 million plays as people searched for Adele’s version, found him, and gave it a listen. It escalated from there as more and more people saw his high play numbers and gave it a listen out of curiosity. A good cover may, in fact, be the perfect time to add on a SoundCloud plays service that will get you noticed!
Create a Playlist of other artists
Anyone can create a Playlist. Most artist’s focus on doing this with their own tracks. Instead, you can create a playlist with other artists, include a few of your tracks, and let the other artists know to share the Playlist. This is exactly like any other collaboration tactic and helps artists to share each other’s audience.
Send personal tracks to influencers via dm
Influencer marketing is a whole other style of marketing which is really taking off. Basically, you work to identify your biggest fans, who have influence, and you communicate with them directly. Think of them as your street team, or your hype-people, always working to build you up purely out of love.
Respond to comments, create a deeper bond with fans
Your fans expect not only good music from you, but also great interaction. So, give it to them. And that begins with responding to the comments they leave on your page. Set some time to read through all the comments that came through and you will likely find ones that are interesting.
When replying, don’t just go with one-off replies. Instead, try striking up a conversation with your fans on the comments section. Do this by ending your first reply with a question, and they will gladly answer it. From there, you can further engage them any way you want.
Negative comments are also something that you have to deal with almost on a daily basis. However, you can turn those comments around by responding to them the right way. Open Forum gives these handy tips:
- Respond appropriately. Don’t try to put the blame back on the commenter. Instead, acknowledge the points he said and answer them in a positive manner.
- Be brief. Never go on a lengthy rant just to refute what the negative comment said. Instead, offer a short note of apology and give the commenter the assurance that you’ll take his points into consideration.
- Think of comments as advice. Remember, your fans would want to see you become more successful. So, look at the negative comments as tips and suggestions that you can use to further enhance your craft.
- Remember that everyone will be reading your responses. Keep in mind that, as is with other social media, SoundCloud is very much a public space. You can use the opportunity to show how you effectively handle rowdy crowds and it will endear you to fans more if you do it the right way.
As Taylor said, the haters gonna hate hate hate hate. Shake them off, but don’t ignore them outright!
Do proper market research on your genre, images, interests, etc
As your goal is to attract people to play your music, you definitely want to know who would want to actually listen to it. This is where extensive market research will come in handy.
The first pieces of information that you want to know more about is the genre of music that you plan on entering. Of course, you already know the kind of music you want to play, but you also need to know how many people actually listen to that genre to give you an idea of the size of audience you potentially have.
The quickest way to get data on the most popular genres is by checking out the “most played tracks” weekly list. The list gives you a snapshot of what most people are listening to. You can see how many artists are making it into the weekly charts in your genre.
You also need to get a good idea of how receptive your target audience will be for the image that you plan on conveying. Do some test screenings of your material before putting these live on SoundCloud to tweak them better.
Social Media promotion tactics
Share on your Facebook page
Considering the size and reach of Facebook, you have likely been on the site long before you began using SoundCloud. So make the most of the social media platform. Sharing on Facebook is easy, all you have to do is paste the link to your track into your post and it will automatically show up as a clickable link.
Celebrate everything and anything to keep engagement up! Chance first released this album on SoundCloud to grow to where he is today… A multiple Grammy winner!
Promote on Facebook Groups discreetly
Bombarding the Facebook groups you are part of with links to your SoundCloud tracks can be pretty annoying to other members of the group. Share your links at an appropriate rate to the specific group. Some you can share once a day, some you can only share once a week. Consider the group’s needs first, and only then post your content. Don’t get kicked out for being a little …over-zealous.
Share on Twitter and use Twitter hashtags
Twitter is great for providing real-time updates for your fans. And it also lets you embed your tracks for direct play on your tweets. Tweet as often as you can as part of a general Twitter marketing plan, and embed tracks to keep your fans and potential new listeners in the loop.
Don’t forget to include a hashtag for making it trend, not only on Twitter but also in other places. Popular French DJ David Guetta is particularly fond of such hashtags when tweeting about his new tracks.
Participate in relevant hashtags
Ride what is trending on Twitter by using the relevant hashtags for your SoundCloud link tweets. Of course, for this to work effectively, your post itself should be relevant to whatever topic the hashtag is all about.
Choose which hashtag trends to join in on carefully, and select the appropriate tracks to embed to make your tweet more meaningful. The hashtag #SoundCloud is itself very popular for drawing attention to your embedded tracks on Twitter.
Comment and share other artists’ posts and tweets
Reaching out to other artists can help you expand your audience. Comment on their posts for them to notice you. Sharing their posts on your page and tagging them also helps for this purpose. When they see you do this, they will be more interested in seeing your tracks and sharing these to their followers.
Here’s a case of J. Cole helping Bas because Bas did so much to help J. Cole. It lead to J. Cole sharing Bas’ SoundCloud track and earning him some major plays:
Link to SoundCloud in Youtube annotations and descriptions
Youtube is great for premiering the music videos for your SoundCloud tracks. However, one big problem with Youtube is that it and SoundCloud don’t integrate into each other like other social media platforms.
Your only option is to post links in the video description and embedded annotations. Try to make these more noticeable by including them near the top, and attractive to entice people to click with a clear call to action.
Post SoundCloud links in Youtube comments
An alternative way to spread your SoundCloud links on Youtube is by posting them in comments. To be sure that people will actually click these and not take them as spam, post your link comments only on songs that are relevant to the links, such as those that are in the same genre as your tracks.
You can also do this with your own videos to direct people to your other tracks. BE the ‘FIRST!’ to comment on your own songs and include that SoundCloud link to keep people engaged with your content.
Share on your Tumblr page
While not as extensive in reach as other social media outlets, Tumblr is still a useful platform to promote your SoundCloud tracks. Sharing on the microblogging site is pretty straightforward, SoundCloud itself provides a share button you can use to post directly to Tumblr. Alternately, you can post it manually by pasting the URL.
Share on Pinterest
Pinterest may be known for providing links to images, but it also lets you embed SoundCloud tracks into your pins. Take advantage of the additional mileage by bringing in your tracks from SoundCloud and embedding them into your pins. You can also encourage your SoundCloud followers to share the tracks on their Pinterest accounts if they have any.
Popular rock band The Strokes did just that, encouraging their fans to share their latest SoundCloud tracks on their Pinterest accounts.
Run contests
Everyone loves contests and a lot of people will be more than willing to join if the prize is well worth the effort. So make sure that you have a good stash of prizes ready. For an added push, you can insert your logo or SoundCloud URL on the packaging of the prizes.
Make sure that contest rules are as simple as possible, like the example above. Having your contestants share particular SoundCloud tracks on their profiles, with the post serving as their entries, are probably the simplest contest ‘rules’ that you can implement. However, you can also play around with other rules that will get people to listen to your track, as long as they remain easy to pull off for your participants.
Connect with social media influencers
Social media influencers are people who command a huge following online. These might either be popular artists, influential industry leaders, or other well-known personalities. Being able to connect with them will get you and your SoundCloud music introduced to an even larger audience.
Of course, the challenge is making yourself stand out from the multitude of followers these personalities have for them to take notice. Kristina Cisnero, of social media management platform Hootsuite, says that knowing how to engage with the influencer effectively will be the key. Cisnero says that you need to:
“Provide value up-front and give them what they want—engagement. Interact with influencers through content they are sharing, and participate in conversations they are starting or leading. Twitter chats are a great way to do this.”
Once you have gotten your target influencers to interact with you, they will be more willing to share your SoundCloud tracks to their followers. However, don’t rest on your laurels yet, as you have to maintain the newfound relationship. Keep up to date with their happenings so that you have a good idea of what to talk about during engagement sessions. Sending them some friendly messages every now and then also works well.
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