SoundCloud Marketing – 9 Solid Secrets To Get Heard On SoundCloud
1. Keep your track, album, and playlist titles clean
Titles are obviously pretty important when it comes to catching a pontetial listeners attention, and keeping the title ‘clean’ goes a long way in getting plays.
Bad title: AllxxThexStars051418vfinal
Good title: All The Stars
A fairly simple tip, perhaps, but you’d be surprised how many illegible song titles we still have sent to us.
2. Make the most of images and descriptions
Aside from the title, the artwork of a track is what grabs a listeners attention at the start, so be sure to use a high res artwork that stands out from the rest.
With descriptions, SoundCloud recommends “track’s backstory, add credits, lyrics, gear lists, or guest lists. To give a shout out to collaborators and feature artists, add links to their SoundCloud profiles.”
3. SoundCloud genre and mood tags are important
This is pretty important as SoundCloud uses an algorithm to funnel tracks with the right tags to the right people. If your song is a mellow, sad piece of electronica, use the right tags and you’ll get the right ears on it.
4. Build your own SoundCloud discography
Keeping your profile tidy is crucial, and the best way to d that is creating your own discography. Playlists marked as an album, EP, single, or compilation will be displayed in the albums section of your profile.
5. How to edit multiple tracks at once
In their own words: We have good news if you think updating tracks one at a time seems like a drag (Narrator: It is). You can make changes – update settings, tags, and artwork – to multiple tracks at once and also create a new playlist from a selection of uploads. To update multiple tracks go to soundcloud.com/you/tracks. Select the tracks you want to change and then click Edit or Add to playlist to make your changes.
6. Repost your track daily the first 3 days.
If you go to the track settings after one day this is live when you set your track to private and back to public again (waiting 2 minutes in between) you make your track appear as a new track on other people incoming tracks section. Pushing your track to the top of the list gives it again chances to get heard. Don’t overuse this trick unless you want your followers to unfollow you. Don’t be exaggerated. TIP. Say your track is a new song and free download. This is something that really worked for me. I found that in SC there’s so many people looking for great fresh free music to download easily. When you clearly specify that at the end of your songname that increases the chances that one your track get attention from one of those users. Obviously if your track is not freedownload, you don’t want to lie to your followers…In my case, I use the buy link/label from song settings section to point to my website so they can also download, but from my server, that could also work for you. The new song in the song name is very useful specially when you when you have been using TIP5 with old tracks occasionally so they can say “ok now is not a repost, is a new one so let’s listen it”.
7. Put your band/project’s name on your artwork.
Let’s say your music and content is absolutely fantastic and one of your followers is following hundreds of users. One day this person get to listen one of your tracks liking it a lot. After a while you come with your next release. The same person which is still following you finds your track in a list of 50 tracks to listen. He/she wants to pick some of them to start. At this point the track that will gain more attention will be one with a great artwork…maybe one with an interesting tag. Who knows…but if this person recognise a producer or band that already liked before, that’s a WIN for that producer. How do you manage to be such producer? first, you need them to like your track, but you also need them to remember you so when you have a new track you make them want to come for more. One way to do such thing is to emphasise the project name in the artwork. You might be asking yourself now, but why is this needed…my band name is already there. Your are right, is already there…but in small fonts below the songname…you have to be very lucky that they are putting attention on the band name when they are at the same time, commenting, listening, watching the picture, playing a game, speaking to a colleague, reading comments, etc. Make it easier for the listener and it would only take 2 minutes.
8 Suggested use of Spotlight.
Spotlight is a tab that will come in paid subscriptions of SC and allows you to easily feature tracks or sets on a landing page of your profile. I’ve seen people using it in many different ways. There’s a fact about this the first track on the list will be the one getting most of the plays of people not currently following you, people evaluating the possibility of start following you if they like such track. Most of them won’t ever consider your second track if they didn’t like the first…you’ll be lucky if those ones even finish listening the first one. So pick your best track on place it as the first one. Which one? the one that has more plays, favs, etc. You can also consider your best track the one that has a best plays/favs relation (if you have a track with 3,000 plays and 2 favs and one track with 1,000 plays but with 300 favs from my point of view the second one wins). As a second track for the spotlight list place your newest track and consider TIP6 to help them know which one is your latest work.
9. Check your best listeners tracks frequently.
SC offers great stat features, use them. Go to one of your tracks and hit the view more in the stats section. In the list of listeners, hit the view more so you get the full window with the list. That list is ordered by number of times each user listened your track. Now you can start from the biggest fan checking what are they doing. Listen to many of their tracks, put attention and again, give honest feedback. You might not like their music, technique, skills, sound, mastering….but there’s always something good about it. Open your mind and heart and it will easily come. When it’s there, share it! This is a nice thing to do and is a way to say thanks. They will appreciate that. TIP. Real life people likes. This is something that happens very often to me. Let’s say someone you know come to you saying “hey dude I really liked your new song, is great”. Then your realise that even though this person has a SC and Facebook, didn’t do anything. This is because most people just don’t use the like/fav button. You need sometimes to tell them “hey that’s cool thanks for that…do you think you can hit the fav?…that would really help a lot man”. You won’t believe me how many likes you were wasting there just because you leave them pass. EXTRA: when you share your song in your facebook timeline, let’s assume you have your friends and family there…so don’t be shy to say “Family and friends, this is my new song…is about {put what is about} and it would really help a lot if you can hit the share button, the like or comment anything here!”. People like, comment and share at least 3 more times when they are asked to do so.
