How to get more plays on SoundСloud: 5 tips that actually work

What started as a platform for professional musicians back in 2007 has morphed into the dominant music platform for millions of content creators worldwide. It is streaming day by day at a flash-like rate!  SoundСloud has rapidly become the one-stop platform for distributing music, demos, and beats, with producers, singers, and any other kind of music and content collaboration with over 150 million users within the first few years of growth. It has contributed significantly to the career growth of several independent creators like Post Malone who’s White Iverson which became a viral hit after uploading on the platform. SoundСloud is a viable platform for artists to get discovered, attract new followers, and also promote your music effectively to a specific audience if you know how to. Available on Web, iOS, Android, Sonos, Chromecast, and Xbox One, SoundСloud gives users access to quality music.

If you are an upcoming artist or an independent creator, know that it is not enough to upload your music on SoundCloud. To attract a large number of listens, plays, or shares, you have to put in the work. You have to promote your music applying best practices and available tools to give your tracks an initial number of SoundCloud plays, after that algorithm will facilitate your further promotion. We’ll run you through the process of achieving your goal from the start and also show you some tips that will guarantee you more plays if you put them to work.

The Basic Information About SoundCloud

• This musician platform has generated over 166 million dollar in 2019.
• The number of users who are registered on the platform is over 76 million! Agree, the number is rather huge for the kind of social media niche.
• And one more impressive piece of data: the number of people accessing SoundCloud monthly is 175 million!

Before you upload your content on SoundCloud, here are some things that must be checked off your list:

Decide Which Genre of Music to Specialize in. And What Prominent Features Can Attract Users’ Attention.

Your music is bound to go nowhere or attract just a few plays if you fail to plan from the beginning. As soon as an artist places a song in their list of favorites, they get another notification about similar genres. This helps the followers to filter out their music playlist according to genres or tags and stay organized and ready to go.

Create Good Music/Quality Content

It is easier and faster for good, quality, and engaging content to go viral or gain traction on any platform than poor content. Nobody likes crappy music and it is very important to keep your listeners in mind while you create music for them. People will not listen to your music if they do not like it. Ask for genuine feedback from the public, other artists, and your close-knit circle. A lot of non-quality music has been uploaded on SoundCloud and you need to create really good content to stand out from the crowd. If you are in for the long-haul and you want to build a career in music, you must be willing to get better at your music. There must be a great sync between your message, your lyrics, your production, mixing and mastering consistency. You can use waveform comments to show your community your process and ask for feedback. You don’t have to be completely done with a track to publish it either. In the end, always publish and promote your best work and never forget that good music always sells.

SoundCloud Policies

SoundCloud frowns seriously at plagiarized content. Your work must be original and must be in accordance with SoundCloud copyright policies. To pass the copyright test, you must be able to answer yes to these questions;

• Was your music created by you?
• What about lyrics? Can you create it by yourself?
• Do the track recording and producing are made by you? Or you have some kind of sound recording permission from the record label or producer
• And one of the main points is the permission it is written from the owners of the copyright. This document must have the deal to use the samples that are presented at the track.

How to Create a SoundCloud Account

If you still haven’t tried SoundCloud before or you are just starting with using the platforms, you’re wondering how to start or how to maximize the platform. First thing to note is that SoundCloud is a paid platform with varying prices based on the different subscription plans.

Types of Soundcloud Account

• The SoundCloud Pro Unlimited Version

Those people who want to get access to upload usage at unlimited conditions. They also have the possibility to look at full SoundCloud stats, to make replacement of tracks without stats losing, or schedule releases. The order of such an offer will cost $12 per month.

People who decide to use this proposition will also get the possibility to access SoundCloud Premier Version and use the quiet mode of the platform.

• The SoundCloud Pro Usage Version

This is one more version, which offers something more from the basic subscription. Its price is $6 per month. You’ll get permission to post in quiet mode and spotlight your tracks and playlists on your account.

SoundCloud Basic

There is one important thing to pay attention to: The Basic Period. The SoundCloud platform gives a great chance for its users to try the service usage for free. The difference between the paid version and free is that the experience of the first is of course higher. And also the version without any payments has some specific limitations. By the way, you will have the possibility to choose your favorite music and to enjoy the platform even with those limitations.

Once you have been able to set up your account and upload your music, here are some top tips to help you promote and get the commensurate plays you deserve for your music on SoundCloud:

Tip 1. Cross-promote with other platforms

The SoundCloud community has the great possibility to share new tracks. But this can limit the number of plays you can generate.  Integrating other audiences from off-site platforms like blogs, hype machine, YouTube Channels, Spotify Playlists, Influencers like vloggers, Instagram accounts, and radio stations can be a great way to drive a lot of plays to your SoundCloud Channel. Once you upload a track, always auto-post them to other platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ by linking your accounts in your account settings.

On the platform, you can search for channels on SoundCloud that can help repost your music to larger numbers of people than you ever could. Repost channels, Other artists with bigger followings, Promotional channels, Labels/collectives, Playlisters can been great options to explore. The key is to recognize which approach would give you the most effective results and do what works for you. One way to get a quick boost for plays is to be featured on a blog, but you have to know how to network with bloggers in order to be featured. This blog usually gets around 100 music submissions each day. The people who do end up being featured always have a certain number of traits though.

Tip 2. Followers Hack

Rather than just give your music out for free, SoundCloud Followers.org – a free site that lets users create follow-to-download gateways. Get users to repost, like and follow your songs or account in exchange for downloads. The website is free to use and very easy to set up. Registration and gateway set up takes about 1 minute. You will be amazed by the results. Thousands of SoundCloud creators use this hack and some have even used it to grow their followers to as high as 50,000. You have more to gain than to lose. Try it out but be sure to convert your followers into fans because that is what translates into plays, shares and a greater spread.

Tip 3. Always Tag your Music

One of the fastest and most convenient way for new fans to find your music to tag your music. Tagging makes you discoverable when a listener is searching SoundCloud. The better your tags, the easier you are to find. Always do your research on the right tags and tag based on your genre. It is not about using the popular tags but the tags that best describe your work. Don’t use a classic music tag for example if you made a drum and bass track. It also helps to add the moods and a location to your tags as well. You can also create your own unique tags for your brand and also your music community.

Tip 4. Giveaways

This is hinged on the principle of value for value. To get real and organic SoundCloud followers very fast, you can get people involved through giveaways. You can run a contest via social media where participants get to perform actions one of which is following your music. Winners get a free show ticket, merchandise, product, gadget, an expense paid outing or anything you are certain would be of value to your audience. It is a cost-effective way to generate traffic and it sure beats trying to buy followers or use bots. Take note though that this is not a sustainable way to grow your followers or get a high number of plays for your music.

Tip 5. Engage with other Creator’s content

SoundCloud is a massive community and for you to truly grow in any community, you must consistently engage and collaborate. Don’t just focus on putting out your work, also comment, like, and repost other people’s music from your SoundCloud account. Be open to message other creators who you sincerely like their music, compliment them, engage with their content and ask if they want to collaborate and repost some of your songs as well. It is always a win-win when you can celebrate the work of others and grow yours as well.

SoundCloud is a great tool to build your music career and grow your community but you have to use it right to make it work. If you consider this advice to be good and will use it, you’ll see the prominent changes in the followers gathering process. A musician’s value lies in his authenticity both in content and in fans. Always stay clear of websites offering free followers without human verification or making you do surveys to get followers. In the end, if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. Build from the ground up and always show up.

Image Credit: wayhomestudio – www.freepik.com