Sounds in the Cloud: Sharing and Promoting Music with SoundCloud

What’s the use of good music when it’s just collecting dust in someone’s basement?

Musicians who plan to make it big in the industry now have a great new social web tool, SoundCloud, to help them promote their craft. Amateur or professional,  SoundCloud makes it simpler and more efficient for musicians to take that masterpiece from one’s basement and out to the world.

What is SoundCloud?

In a nutshell, SoundCloud is an audio platform that allows registered users to easily upload, record, promote, and share their original creations.

Launched in October 2008, SoundCloud is a relatively young music platform. However, after almost five years, SoundCloud has already gained 10 million registered users.

As the brainchild of Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss—both of which were frustrated over the limited capabilities of the Internet to send and receive music files—this open platform has now made it possible for musicians all over the world to collaborate easily. It is not limited to any kind of genre. Audio creators can now work together, provide feedback for each other, and share their art with anyone.

Promoting Music through SoundCloud

How does SoundCloud operate?

More than just an online platform for exchanging music, SoundCloud has plenty of features that will help musicians worldwide. This includes:

  • Recording audio through SoundCloud itself or through other mobile applications.
  • Sharing recorded music publicly or privately.
  • Using social networking sites and blogs to promote music through sound embedding. This will allow musicians to receive a wider feedback from their online followers.
  • Applications on SoundCloud allow users to do mobile voice recording, online mastering, digital distribution to profiles on Facebook, and iPad music making.

Top 5 Reasons Why Musicians Should Use SoundCloud

Making it big in the music industry requires crafty and creative ways to send one’s music out to the world. SoundCloud maximizes the potential of the Internet to reach a wider audience. Read on to find out why every musician should use SoundCloud:

  1. It’s plain and simple.

SoundCloud does not need a rocket scientist to make it work.  All you need to do is to set up a free account and upload your music in any format.

With premium accounts, however, users can also avail of more features, such as statistics, controlled distribution, and custom branding. They can add more descriptions, buy links, and include video links and the release date of a particular track.

  1. It has the best online music players.

SoundCloud players are plastered all over the World Wide Web. In fact, they have added a couple more players specifically targeted for blogs and domains to grab the attention of the audience all the more:

  • The minimal player, which shows the artist name and song title next to the play button.
  • The artwork player, which shows the artist’s preferred artwork and the play button.
  1. It works well with The Hype Machine.

The Hype Machine is a website that aggregates posts by music bloggers, selects the best ones, and shows it on their website. These blogs, however, are not randomly picked. They were selected based on certain criteria set by the Hype Machine. The goal behind the Hype Machine is to help music fans discover the best articles online regarding any music genre and any music-related posts.

The Hype Machine’s collaboration with SoundCloud was initially limited to the former’s weekly radio show hosted on the latter’s platform. However, The Hype Machine now detects SoundCloud players on each blog. Today, SoundCloud is the only streaming music player that the Hype Machine detects.

With this comes great news for those who host their tracks on SoundCloud: When a fan plays your masterpiece on the Hype Machine website, you will also get to track the number of times it has been played and on which website it was embedded.

  1. Get to see stats and more stats.

Every musician longs to see even a rough estimate of the number of people his or her music reaches. SoundCloud provides exactly that. It can log details, such as:

  • The blogs that played your music wherever they are in the world
  • The blogs talking about your music
  • Your most played tracks
  • The number of times your free track was downloaded
  • Trackbacks from The Hype Machine
  1. Blogging is made easy.

Founders Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss

Sharing music with the blogging community has never been this easy. The people behind SoundCloud made it available for a lot people to receive music through Dropboxes. Other than the Hype Machine, SoundCloud has also collaborated with Blogger. It is currently in talks with WordPress for an official integration.

Tips and Strategies for Effective Sound Cloud Promotion

Now that you’ve seen how you can benefit from the features of SoundCloud, it’s time for step two: the basic know-how of properly and effectively promoting music using SoundCloud:

  1. Spread the music.

Let your music speak for you. Share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social networking sites that you have. Moreover, SoundCloud users have the option to join groups that can further help each other in marketing their tracks.

  1. Share the music for free.

The good thing about marketing using SoundCloud is that you don’t have to dole out millions of dollars to establish your name online. Why not give your future fans the chance to get to know your kind of music for free? If they like it, they will mostly likely recommend it to their own friends, and so on. This may be the way for you to be catapulted to fame.

  1. Expand your horizon by joining groups.

Great minds think alike, as they say. Share your music with those who have the same passion for your chosen genre in order to tap into a bigger potential fan base. SoundCloud allows for location-based users to be grouped together for better collaboration. You and your group may organize a gig, or you may be invited to one yourself.

  1. Track commenting.

The online world has made it easier for people to critique the works of one another. For someone who is only starting out, every criticism is important. SoundCloud welcomes comments from fans and fellow musicians. This is where an artist will hone his or her craft, if he still plans on making it big.

  1. Follow and follow back.

Following other artists gives every musician the chance to be promoted all the more. If another artist likes your work, chances are, he or she will recommend it. This way, you are also making good use of an even wider fan base.

If you want to leave your mark in the world as a musician, you might as well find a sure-fire way to let the world know of your music. Tapping into the potential of SoundCloud may give you the fame and recognition you’ve always looked for.

About the author: Rod Tolentino is a Marketing Consultant for ServerPoint – a Web Hosting Company that provides cloud web hosting.

 

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Comments

  1. My name is Drake Castaneda and I am a college student at the University of Florida. Check my music out on Soundcloud! Just have some mixed tracks up right now, as well as a longer mix of some great, sick new tracks as well. If you’re into the EDM scene you should love it! Looking forward to getting more into the production side of things in the near future as well.

  2. Hi there Drake! Will do! Gotta check EDM scene soon! Good luck to your music using soundcloud! Thanks for dropping by!

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