How To Get More SoundCloud Followers And Plays

If you're on SoundCloud, you may be wondering how you can get more people following you, or how you can get more people listening to the songs you've uploaded on there. If so, you're in luck.

Today I'm going to show you how to get more SoundCloud plays and followers, as well as looking at what could be a better aim than this for your SoundCloud campaigns.

Have a read on, and if you find this helpful please share with fellow musician.

Know Why You Want More Followers And Plays On SoundCloud

Before anything else, you need to ask yourself why you want more plays on SoundCloud. Or even more followers. If you want it just so your numbers look bigger and you think it'll mean more people will notice you, you should bear this in mind:

It doesn't matter if you have 10 plays or 10,000 plays, most likely neither will help your music career that much. Let me explain, and give you a much better target to aim for.

The amount of plays and subscribers you have aren't alone going to be what gets you where you want to be in music. You could have lots more plays and SoundCloud followers than someone else, but they might have more real world fans and be making more money from music than you.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying SoundCloud doesn't have its uses, because it does. It's great for connecting with other musicians who you could potentially collaborate with, and it's great for having an easy way to host and embed your music into other places. That said, purely focusing on how many views and followers you have won't help you much.

With that in mind, if you still want to get more plays and follows, here's a few ways in which you can do that.

Get More SoundCloud Followers By Driving Traffic To Your Profile

If you want more views on SoundCloud, here are two broad places you can get those from:

1. People who already actively use SoundCloud, and
2. People outside of SoundCloud who like music.

For this part, let's focus on how you can get people interacting with you from within SoundCloud.

A lot of the people who use SC are musicians themselves, or people within the music industry. While it also gets users who are music fans, this isn't the best way to target them.

Bearing in mind you're going to be talking to mainly other music industry people on SoundCloud, one way to get them to come along and listen to you music is by visiting their profile first. When you're there, listen to their songs and comment on them if you like them. This will help get you on their radar, and a percentage of people will go on to visit your page back and check it out. Avoid generic “great”, “awesome”, “I like this” type comments. This will get you nowhere. Leave something of substance.

Also, you shouldn't comment on other people's music just so they listen to yours. If you simply want views and followers, you can do this, although I wouldn't recommend it. It's not going to benefit you, as not only will you end up leaving comments with people you probably can't build a meaningful connection with, but you could also spend this time better promoting your music elsewhere.

I suggest only communicating with people who you genuinely like and could potentially collaborate with in the future. That way you'll get more views and followers, as well as people you can collaborate with in some way.

Add SoundCloud Embedded Players On Your Website And More

One of the best ways to get more listens to your songs on SoundCloud is to place those songs on other places which your fans already visit.

The first and easiest place to do this is your own website. You should have your own .com site set up (or a website with the country extension of your choice) as not only will it give you a more professional look, but it'll help make it easier to turn visitors into fans. If you haven't got one set up yet, here's a guide on how to do that.

Once you have a website and tracks on SC, the next step is to get your SoundCloud player and add it to your website. There's a guide on how to do that here.

Other than your own site, there are two other places you should be adding your player to:

1. Other people's websites.
   If you look around, you'll find websites covering other people's music. These are either music news websites in your genre, or song discovery websites. While some of these won't get you many additional views, if you manage to get on ones with higher traffic, this could get you some nice extra plays.
   As part of your general marketing, you should try and get others to showcase your music. Just be sure to approach people in a non-selfish manner.
2. Your social sites and other properties.
   Not only can SoundCloud embedded players be added to your own website, but they can be added to your social profiles too. This means you can add your song to a Tweet, a Facebook update and the like.
   If you get visitors to your social sites this is worth doing. They might miss it on your website, but see it there instead.

Email Your Newsletter Subscribers About Your New Tracks On SoundCloud

If you’re releasing new music on SoundCloud on a regular basis, then one of the best ways to get some immediate traction for your songs is by sending your email subscribers over to have a listen.

Whether you know it or not, there’s a good chance you have a stronger relationship with the people subscribed to your email list versus casual visitors on your website, or even your social media followers. So, there’s a much better chance these people want to hear from you, and want to hear your new music too.

If you aren’t building your email list already, start collecting email addresses at every show you play, or start blogging, and get your blog readers to subscribe to receive additional communication from you.

We’ve already covered email marketing basics elsewhere, so I won’t go on and on about this, but if you put in the effort necessary to grow your database and promote to it, you’ll be more successful in all campaigns you undertake – not just in boosting SoundCloud numbers.

Use The SoundCloud Icon In Your Marketing

Let people know you’re on SoundCloud. Some people will never find you simply because they aren’t aware that you have a presence there. Don’t assume anything.

Put a clickable SoundCloud icon on your website. Put an icon in your emails. Put an icon on your YouTube channel art, or your social media cover art. Put an icon on your business cards, posters, or other print materials. Mention the fact that you’re on SoundCloud at your shows.

If you want to take it a step further, register a new domain name (like yourbandnamesc.com or your yourbandnamemusic.com), and have it redirect to your SoundCloud page. It’s much easier for people to find and remember a .com domain name than a SoundCloud web address. But only do this if you have a bit of a budget. There is a yearly cost attached to domain names, and you're probably paying for your artist domain and hosting already.

These tactics should help you to build more awareness for your music on SoundCloud, and awareness can blossom into engagement. People need repeated impressions to know that you exist, and combined with other strategies mentioned in this guide (like advertising), you can get in front of people more often and leave an impression with them.

Mention Your SoundCloud Profile In Your PR Campaigns

There’s one thing the most successful musicians tend to have in common – they either have a publicist, or they work with one on a regular basis.

It’s easy to think that major label artists have it easy, because they have a huge marketing budget behind them. That’s true in some cases, but many times even signed artists have no choice but to promote themselves. Labels don't want to take huge risks on unproven acts.

You can do just as good a job as they can with your marketing if:

1. You have a professional website and photography.
2. You have a grasp of how to build a following on social media, and you’re putting in the work to make it happen.
3. You’re proactively building your email list and connecting with your subscribers.
4. You're performing and touring regularly.
5. You’re working with a skilled and experienced publicist who understands and values your music.

A good publicist can get you radio interviews, blog features, magazine writeups, and visibility for your press releases. What better way to get the news out about your SoundCloud profile than to leverage media?

Now I do hope you have bigger goals and a plan in mind for your music career, because using publicity just to promote your SoundCloud profile might not be the best use of your resources. But it is another good way to get the word out, which is why I brought it up. Promoting your music on SoundCloud, could be a secondary goal for your campaigns, with the primary goal being the advancement of your career and monetization.

Also, I have been warning you throughout this guide, but don’t spend money you don’t have. Publicity campaigns can be expensive. If you can monetize that publicity, you’ll get a return on investment, but unless you’re calculated and measured in your strategy, you’re just going to be throwing your money into a blackhole. That’s the last thing I want for you.

Advertise Your SoundCloud Profile

If you have a budget, and you want to promote your SoundCloud profile more aggressively, then you should consider advertising (don’t forget to integrate it with your existing marketing).

Some of the more popular advertising platforms include:

• Google AdWords.
• YouTube advertising (which can be set up via Google AdWords).
• Facebook advertising.

Each of these platforms work more or less the same in that you can set a daily budget, schedule the length of the campaign, and customize your targeting to reach a well-defined audience.

Google AdWords is a good choice if there’s a keyword you’re looking to target (i.e. you’ve recorded a Halloween song, so you want the song to rank for the keyword “Halloween”). You only pay when people click on your ad, and they will be sent to the website address you specify.

Facebook advertising is another worthwhile option. You would likely want to initiate a “Send people to your website” campaign, and use enticing text and imagery to get people to go over to SoundCloud and listen to your tracks or follow you.

YouTube advertising is likely the least practical of the bunch, at least for this type of campaign. But if you already have a video that’s getting some views, and it’s sending people over to your SoundCloud profile, then you could simply boost that video.

I wouldn’t suggest using advertising unless you have some play in your budget. You must experiment and tweak your ads to get desired results, and that may take some time. You might have to “burn” a bit of money to get there, so keep that in mind.

One More Important Step

Now, both of the above will help you get more listens. If you want more follows from this strategy however, you need to do one more simple thing:

Include a call to action with your players.

Something as simple as saying “If you like this song, please follow my SoundCloud account for new songs as they come” will get you more followers. The saying “if you don't ask you don't get” is often very true. People might like your music, but it might not occur for them to follow you. If you put that idea in their head, a percentage more will go on to do that.

Conclusion

So there you go, how to get more SoundCloud followers and plays. While you should often be looking at more important things such as how many genuine fans you're getting and how well you're networking, if you want more plays and followers that's how to get them.

So, have you found any other ways to get more SoundCloud followers and plays? If so let us know in the comments section below.