This article is going to give you 6 ways to promote your SoundCloud tracks. Read all the way through for our featured track!
How to promote your music on SoundCloud
Using SoundCloud Pro
Once you start using SoundCloud’s Pro accounts, for as low as $5/month, you’ll wonder why you ever thought the free option was a good one. The Pro account allows you to see important data, such as:
- Where your fans are in the world.
- Where your fans are playing tracks from online.
- Which apps, pages, and social networks they are using to access your tracks from.
- Which cities you’re most popular in.
How to promote on soundcloud
Each piece of data allows you to grow your understanding of where your marketing efforts are succeeding, where they’re failing, and how you can better promote your music online and off.
For instance, let’s say the you find out that two towns over is playing your newest track often. Have you played a concert there recently? No? It may well be time. Now let’s say that your songs are being played much more often on Facebook than Twitter. You can adjust your tactics to push more people to share on Facebook where you’re already succeeding, and look at why Twitter isn’t getting you results.
Adding on some SoundCloud plays to your tracks could get you incredible results. With your social proof climbing higher with each play, your chances of someone who has never heard of you before playing your songs will also increase dramatically. Be proactive and use our SoundCloud plays service, and maximize your investment in SoundCloud Pro.
Live online performances
Many musicians are making most of their money off of live performances. The uniqueness and immediacy of a live performance can never be downloaded – but a portion of it can be live streamed. A tool like StageIt.com allows you to control when your live concerts, rehearsals, and practics are streamed live online.Unlike using a Google+ hangout or YouTube Live Stream, StageIt allows for a virtual ‘Tip Jar.’ Now your fans actually have the chance to tip you for your performances. And you don’t even need to break out the full fireworks stage show for it to be effective. The shows are better the more intimate they are.
If the Internet has done anything it’s break down barriers between people of differing classes. Musicians are no longer untouchable golden gods like the hard rock bands of the 70s. They’re accessible through Twitter, sharing their personal photos on Instagram, and ranting on Facebook. Use StageIt for your rehearsals, practices, or studio recording sessions to give your fans the extra access they crave. Push them to SoundCloud at the end of each unique performance and watch your plays grow and grow.
Email marketing is still effective
I still subscribe to, and respond to, email marketing from some of my favorite bands. I actually look forward to the messages that I get from Brian Setzer and Green Day. I feel like an insider, with knowledge that the average fan doesn’t have. Green Day still features their email marketing sign up on their website, even after decades in the industry:
How to promote music on soundcloud
This is your perfect chance to really create an air of “This is a MUST open” by regularly including sneak peeks at tracks in your emails. SoundCloud makes it easy to embed your tracks in emails, making it easy to give your fans that extra level of information.
Tools I recommend for building better emails than the type you send to your mom include AWeber and MailChimp. Both offer you the chance to build your email marketing list, manage your lists, and create emails with incredible looking HTML built features. Here’s some excellent HTML-infused email Christmas marketing from Brian Setzer:
How to promote music on soundcloud
Joining and actively participating in online forums
The most popular online forums for promoting music include:
- Quora
- Harmony Central
- MusicDiscussion
Each one has its own little unique quirk. I’d take the time to look at your genre of music and determine which platform attracts the most fans of your style of music.
I would absolutely not recommend that you sign up for each one, create a profile, and dump SoundCloud tracks on them whenever you feel like it. Instead, focus on the biggest and most relevant forum and actively participate just like everyone else. Include links to your SoundCloud account in your profile, and put them out there when they fit into the conversation. It takes time, but that’s how you make real fans.
Promoting your music on social media
Yes, I know you’re already doing this. Nearly every social media site includes easy ways to share your SoundCloud tracks. But do you know that you can use standard marketing tactics, the kind used by brands, to promote your music on social media? Check out these articles on:
- Twitter marketing
- Hashtag marketing
- Instagram marketing
Creating YouTube videos that aren’t music videos
Every musician on Earth is pushing out music videos on YouTube. It’s an absolute no-brainer of a move for your music marketing. Everything from Beyonce level professionally styled videos, to something you shoot yourself on an iPhone, can succeed on YouTube.The opportunity that you’re missing out on is creating videos which offer more of those ‘behind the scenes’ content types. Here are a few ideas to run with:
Discussing your music equipment. If there’s one thing musicians like to talk about, and fans that are interested want to learn about, it’s what you use to make your music. Talk about your guitars, your mixer, the amp you’re using in the studio versus live, and on and on. Try to follow up on some of the questions that will come up in the comments section.
Film your studio session and explain how you recorded a new track, or what inspired it. This is a great ‘rainy day’ video for fans.
Take a trip out to the local music store and film yourself trying out new gear.
Conduct your own interview, answering the questions you actually want, or even take questions from fans and give them a shoutout in the video.
How you’ll promote your SoundCloud is by including a link to it down in the description and using a call to action in the video to go visit. Cross promotion is so important with people using tools all over the Internet, and you want to get them following you as often as possible. In this example, you’re using your established YouTube audience, and YouTube’s excellent SEO, to send people to your SoundCloud account for another follow there.
