SoundCloud is one of the largest and most influential online music distribution platforms in the world. In today’s music industry, SoundCloud is a fantastic career-influencing platform that cannot be underestimated. It is a unique platform that gives artists all they need to promote their music.
Many artists today have made their mark and found the needed exposure in the community. Also, many labels leveraged Soundcloud to discover talents. More importantly, the platform offers several helpful tools an artist can use to amplify their projects.
As the music industry continues to evolve into a multi-million-dollar business, artists need to find better ways of using SoundCloud. This need has led to creating marketing agencies like Socials Up that help propel artists into the spotlight so their music can be heard on SoundCloud.
This article will look at some promotion strategies that music artists can use to get better numbers on SoundCloud.
The SoundCloud Algorithm
SoundCloud works with the DiscoRank algorithm, designed and engineered by Amelie Anglade. The algorithm works with the explore page and its search results.
The DiscoRank algorithm is hugely complex to explain. However, we have listed some of the factors that’ll help you to understand how it works.
- The music genre has to be in the explore section for such songs to appear on the list.
- Tracks must have the proper labels and tags to appear in search.
- The explore tab chooses recent uploads that are 5-7 days old.
- The disco algorithm counts comments, likes, plays, reposts, etc., on each song.
- Inbound links play a role also in how well the algorithm will work for you.
SoundCloud Promotion Strategies
Here are a few promotion strategies that artists and music promoters can use to get their music heard on SoundCloud.
Strategy 1: Album covers
For artists that want to use SoundCloud, album art is essential. Whether the artist is embedding the tracks on a blog or sharing to Facebook, the album artwork is what people see first. It’s the first impression that music makes even when people have not heard it. So, the artwork attached to a track should stand out. On its own, the album art should represent the music properly wherever it appears.
The artist should be prepared to hire a designer that would do justice in that department. As a rule, artists should use PNG files or, at worst, JPG, which is at least 800×800 pixels of picture quality.
Strategy 2: Tags
One of the ways fans get to reach new music is through tags. With good tags, artists are better discovered on SoundCloud search.
For artists who want to promote their songs, the best idea is, to be honest with their tags, which means that they should use titles that reflect what they have in their tracks. Also, they can include locations and moods in their tags; it’s all helpful. However, artists should only stick to one genre in their tags. That way, the identity of the album is clear. When an album uses the right labels, it becomes easier for users to find such albums.
Strategy 3: Buy link
Artists need lots of streams and likes on SoundCloud, but then, those do not pay. The key to getting paid is to have listeners buy the song.
There are two ways to do this, depending on the type of account used by the artist. For regular account users, SoundCloud allows them to add a purchase link to their track before upload. The link can be found under the metadata tab before upload.
People using Pro accounts have the freedom of choosing what appears on the button. They can make it look like; “stream on Spotify” or “Donate” or something like that. The basic idea is to get fans to support the artist.
Strategy 4: SoundCloud Marketing Companies
Some number counts are also important on SoundCloud. Just like every other social media platform, artists need followings on SoundCloud too. Not only that, they need comments, likes, and a good number of play counts.
That’s because when people see artists with low counts in any category, they tend to believe that the songs are of low quality even without listening. To overcome this challenge, the artist can hire a company to help drive traffic on their music. These companies, like Socials Up, will help the artist increase the followership, listens, and so on.
However, this process can be a little tricky because several scams are waiting to rip people off their cash. To avoid such an unfortunate situation, musicians must use trusted websites.
Strategy 5: SoundCloud Engagement
SoundCloud is called a community for a reason. To get the best music online, an artist must make their online presence known on the platform. Even when buying followers, likes, and all, the artist still needs an active account.
The first step is to get a niche and start to grow. From there, the artist needs to reach out to others. He or she can do that with the following:
- Dropping comments: carefully dropping comments is one way to get people to listen to an artist’s song. With comments, artists can sell themselves to fans and other artists like themselves. Care must be taken, though, to ensure that the comments do not become spam. The artist should drop meaningful comments with links to his or her posts instead of just leaving random trails of links alone.
- Following others: Also, the artist should follow as many people as he or she feels necessary. Following so many people would help such artists build and expand a great network even though this process takes time.
- Joining Groups: There are several groups on SoundCloud that would benefit artists. These groups are created in different categories, either by location or music genre. For instance, an artist in Portland can join the Portland Music group. An electric musician can join groups like Electronic Music or Electronic Music World. With these groups, the artist will meet new fans and potential artists too.
An easier alternative
One of the advantages that come with the internet is that there is always a way around every problem. It all depends on how long one is willing to search and how much is ready to pay. The same goes for the SoundCloud promotion.
While all the above are excellent steps and strategies for getting music promoted on SoundCloud, there is a better and easier alternative.
- To get all SoundCloud plays, all the artists need is to buy social signals.
- Social signals refer to human interaction metrics used on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- On SoundCloud, social signals refer to likes, followers, and, most importantly, plays.
No matter how talented an artist is, they still need plays on SoundCloud to get the deserved recognition. If no one is listening, all the efforts to produce good music is going to waste. But then, it’s common these days to find terrible songs that have lots of plays. Well, people could say some of these artists are lucky, or maybe, they added some tricks — one that might come in handy for everyone.
The truth is, there is a hack around getting vast numbers of plays on SoundCloud. And this method surprisingly has nothing to do with luck or popularity. The plays are essential because it directly influences the decision of other users, either in following the artists or streaming their songs. An artist with a good number of plays on the tracks has a better chance of getting more likes, plays, and followers with that single track.
Difference between fake and real plays on Sound Cloud
The real SoundCloud plays are those that an artist gets when real users on SoundCloud listens to their songs. These users might be people who found the tracks through search, checking related tracks, or they got recommended by someone. To be clear, the user playing the song is a real person who listened to the track without compulsion. This person might also be an artist, or they might not.
On the other hand, fake SoundCloud plays are the ones that are bought by artists. These plays come from robots or fake profiles that only provide this service. As a result, when an artist buys plays, these fake profiles and robots would not buy the tracks or become fans. Their job is only to stream.
Bought plays, at their best, only strengthen social proof. That is, it makes an artist look better and more popular. At the same time, not all fake accounts are of the same quality. While some are easy to tell apart, others look just like normal SoundCloud users. The low-quality accounts usually have incomplete profiles, and most times, they do the same thing repeatedly. Their profiles typically do not have pictures or followers, while they surprisingly follow so many people.
The kind of plays an artist has will have a direct impact on his or her stats. This is why it is essential to get plays from a sound source.
Advantages of buying SoundCloud plays
- It improves social credibility:
With more plays on an artist’s track, they look more professional at what is done. When people look at the profile, they see more of an authority and a seasoned musician other than an upcoming talent.
When the plays are high, people tend to see the tracks as more valuable and popular. Therefore, more people would want to listen to such an artist. While the bought play-profiles won’t buy the artist’s songs, SoundCloud plays will get the artist a better presence on SoundCloud.
- It complements organic promotion and marketing:
Buying plays on SoundCloud fits in perfectly with the above promotional strategies. When combined, bought plays can help to amplify the results from regular promotions. While bought pays has a substantial effect on SoundCloud promotion, together with organic marketing, things become more manageable.
- It enhances agency interest:
The music industry today is all about getting the right deals. However, several artists out there in the world do all it takes to make the little space available at the top. Therefore, as an artist who needs to get seen by some agencies, they should put in something extra. Sometimes, it might just be the number of plays that puts them ahead of others and gets the needed deals.
However, SoundCloud plays come with their unique challenges. For instance, buying social signals are not generally accepted by everyone as an ideal method of marketing. Also, not all the service providers allow you to have a target population. Finally, is the issue of getting scammed on the internet while you seek the best.
All these issues sum up to one thing: you must make sure that you buy your signals from the best sources.