Over the past decade, Soundcloud has become one of the biggest platforms for music artists to share their work with the world. Many have been discovered via the site and have moved on to be super stars.
You may have decided to sign up for this platform and try your luck at stardom. It is not just about being a member, but knowing how to use the site to your advantage. In this article, you will learn various ways you can grow your followership. Read more about that here.
Major music sharing sites have become overcrowded with a great number of musicians seeking worldwide attention. They are all aiming at the same glory of fame and fortune, making the competition a serious issue for newcomers.
The fact is that your music may not be heard by as many people as you would want without a good plan. You need an effective plan that will prevent a situation where you have to stare at low numbers for an awfully long time.
Do Not Take the Wrong Approach
There is an approach to getting followers that many have taken, but has not yielded much success. For example, whenever someone follows you on a social media platform, you may probably send them a link to your music page. What is on your mind is that such proactive step would get just enough people to hear your work, like it, and share it to more people. They would share it to their contacts/friends, then their friends will share it with their friends, and on it goes, right?
Read more about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
Ask yourself if that has ever worked for anybody. If that is your marketing strategy, then you need to start rethinking because you are definitely on the wrong path. That is one of the least likely approaches that will get you a full-time career in music.
The reality is that precious time is being wasted when doing such (time that could be used for effective methods). You will not be able to generate enough revenue in time to further your career if you believe in such approach.
There is no real music business model in that strategy. All the hard work put into writing and recording needs to be promoted with more than just the sharing of links on social media platforms. What you will be doing is throwing all the money you have invested into making good music away. You would need to make that money back and fast. The only way is to put the right line of actions into motion.
How Are You Killing Your Career?
Do not get rid of your SoundCloud profile and uploads just yet. You should not give up because there are success stories that can keep you motivated. You need to have a business model via your profile in order to get loyal fans that will last for life. If users can get all our music for free on the music sharing site, why do you think they would choose to buy it on a commercial site? You should not make all your music available online for free.
You may think that putting your music out there freely is a good way to get more exposure, but you have to do it right. There are some tracks that users should have to pay for. You may drop a free snippet for such tracks.
Remove the notion of “if people like my song, they will look for a way to buy it elsewhere”. People love free stuff. In a realist sense, they would rather not pay for something they can enjoy for free. If you are thinking of how to get followers at SoundCloud, you have to change that mindset.
Paid Marketing
You may not be at the stage where you are going to get enough followers just because a few people like your music. If you are a newbie in the industry, you have to work really hard for the followership. The reality is that you can get those followers faster through paid marketing. Then comes full-time music income generation.
You cannot just spend so much money in making music and not also invest some money in marketing it. It is even very bad to just do nothing but lazy sharing online. Your follower base can grow faster when you put some marketing strategies in place. People can decide to buy your music just because of the kind of promotional efforts you made ? not only because they like music.
In a logical sense, you may like an artist’s song, but may not decide to buy it unless there is something really special about their talent. People have become more sophisticated in selecting songs for their playlist over the years. It is not just about sounding good, but having something special to offer. “Please go listen to my new song and share it to your friends” isn’t real marketing. It will get you nowhere in this age of tight competition.
Other Means of Building Your Follower Base
There are courses and books (e-books) on this available online. If you are not into that kind of approach, you can try other means (explained below). If you are still struggling to build your fan base, it is best you grab a book or apply for an online course. Reading a book or two would not hurt, and no knowledge is lost. You can be of help to others.
You can also try strategies like getting in good with bloggers. You can even repost the work of other artists from your account. It would not hurt to like and comment on the posts of others too.
As an artist, if you spend more time doing the right things to boost your career, you would progress faster. It is great that you have decided to take the necessary step by promoting your music through an online audio distribution platform such as SoundCloud. Lastly, try not to procrastinate about taking the necessary steps explained above.