Effective Ways to Gain Soundcloud Plays
SoundCloud is the largest music and audio platform in the world. SoundCloud lets people discover, listen and enjoy the greatest selection of all genre of music from different artists from all over the world.
The platform has become renowned for its unique content and features, including the ability to share music and connect directly with artists, as well as unearth breakthrough tracks, raw demos, podcasts and more. Since it started in 2007, Soundcloud has grown to be one of the largest music streaming services in the market reaching over 175 million monthly users worldwide.
Even though it offers both free and paid membership on the platform, it has not been easy for most artistes to be getting the audience or the encouraging attention. It’s sad sometimes that, you would spend sleepless nights working and trying to get a nice record for your audience and with all the struggles, you manage to come out with a very creative and incredible record, pay brand influencers and “self-acclaimed” publicist only to end up with fewer plays on your hard work.
Well, I’m not an expert and I cannot promise you millions streams overnight but what I can offer are these simple and basic ways to gain more organic streams on your Soundcloud.
Here are a few tips
1. Share your Links on Social Media
To hit it off, I know you definitely not amused because it’s something you’ve been doing all these while but to no avail but the question here is, Are you doing the right thing the right way?.
The platform already offers you share buttons which I can boldly say amongst the millions of users, only a few use these buttons. That’s not the case. As an artiste whether signed or unsigned, it’s your sole responsibility to take charge of your online activities.
You don’t have to rely on people to do that for you as most of them will only do this only to please you but not because they love your music or are interested in your music career.
There are lots of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Telegram, Instagram, and a lot more of which you can share your links to.
Facebook: Facebook has been one of the greatest tools for sharing of content over the years. It has really helped millions of artistes just like you and making good use of it will have a positive impact on your streams. Instead of posting unrelated topics on your timeline, you could take that opportunity and share your Soundcloud link daily.
One other way is to also share your link in Facebook groups. It is advisable to join relevant groups on Facebook and share the links in the groups. Add inspiring captions to your links. Positive Captions which are related to your content.
Twitter: Another major platform which can really do the magic if managed well. Twitter is a little complicated channel if you someone who uses it less. To keep it simple and basic, to be able to use this platform effectively, I recommend you use a twitter planner/scheduler.
There are lots of these applications such as tweet deck, buffer, twuffer, social Oomph, online. These applications can help you schedule posts. [Read More Here]
Instagram: This platform we all know, doesn’t accept links in the post so the only two ways one can go about this is the Instagram story and link in the biography. Instead of wasting time watching videos which would not improve your streams, why don’t you attach your Soundcloud link to your Instagram stories?
Reddit: Reddit is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members.
Over the years Reddit users have proven to be the ultimate players when it comes to content rating and making viral content. Reddit user has made countless discoveries and solved over hundreds of mysteries with just a few clicks.
So you can imagine what they can do to your music should you join the right group. Sign Up for Reddit and then search for the kind of genre music you do group and join. Anytime you release a new one, just share your links with them. Here’s a full list of all Subreddits.
2. Nice and Creative Cover Art
Album artworks play a very important role when it comes to music. Cover Artworks talks more of a song even before it gets released. One thing most upcoming artistes find it difficult to pay for and don’t really take it seriously is the cover art.
Been seeing the majority of these artistes use PicsArts and other mobile photo editing apps instead of spending a little to get a professional artwork for their music forgetting that their artwork represents their music no matter where it goes.
There are lots of audience who would only listen to your song just because the album cover got their attention. Creative, high-resolution artworks will always do the magic.
3. Waveform
This is something I can boldly say one in a hundred does or take seriously. Waveform means a graphical representation of the pattern of sound pressure variation (or amplitude) in the time domain.
Soundcloud allows users to comment on each song and these comments are shown whilst the songs are been played. Mostly we leave this part to our listeners but one thing is you can also be part of the commenters.
Use this waveform to talk to your fans by explaining the concept of the song, replying their comments and be interactive with them.
4. Using the Right Tags and Details (Metadata)
This is really important. First of all, metadata is a set of data which gives information about other data. When uploading your files, make sure the right tags are used. Tag the right and relevant genre and add the right titles of your songs. Instead of numbers, why not the title of your song?
In addition, before you even think of uploading, use this trick before the song goes online.
• Right-click the mp3 file
• Scroll down to properties
• Then choose details and fill in the forms with the right details.
When you are done, click apply and then ok. This will help improve search engines to easily index your song. I know it’s not easy making music as a career but the end results all depends on your hard work and determination. Recording good music and not putting in the effort needed to promote or push the music, will make everything a waste.
