Promote Your Music With SoundCloud

Promoting your music on the internet has grown up substantially since the old days of just having a website and email address. As a DJ or producer, you now have the chance to show off your output on a number of websites and social networks, but there are lots of them - so which ones do you choose, and how do you get the best out of them.

I’ll be starting off with SoundCloud with this series of posts, but will also be taking in Facebook and Twitter in future posts.

SoundCloud is basically Flickr for audio, which if you are familiar with the inner workings of Flickr then you’ll understand it all very quickly and will probably be able to sign up, start uploading and begin to get the most out of the site. If you’re not - then keep reading.

Signing up is very easy and allows you to create a profile page, adding all common bits of information like website address, age and location. You’ll also have to choose a photo to use as an avatar, as well as a user name that will form your SoundCloud address (such as SoundCloud.com/martinlucas).

Adding audio is easy - and probably one of the first things you’ll want to do. As a non pro-user (Pro accounts are priced from $99.00 to $599.00 per year) you’ll only be able to have 10 audio tracks stored on your account at anyone time - so make sure only your best tracks get on your cloud. Depending what you’re uploading (a lot of different file formats are allowed including mp3, wav, aiff, flac and more), how big the file is (there are no file size limits) and how quick your internet connection is will depend on how long the upload takes. While the upload is in progress you get the chance to fill in lots of information about the audio such as genre, keywords, description, artwork, key, bpm, and even links to where the track can be purchased if it’s been released.

Once your track has been uploaded it’s time to promote it within SoundCloud, as well as share it to the rest of the Internet. If you have a Twitter account it is definitely worth syncing up the two networks, this allows SoundCloud to tweet for you whenever you upload audio, it will also tweet when you add another users track to your favourites.

There are two main ways to get your track in front of other SoundCloud users, to either have them follow you, or to add it to a group. The first option takes time, if you want to be informed of someone’s activity on then follow them - any new uploads, or favourites they add will appear in your dashboard. Following someone doesn’t mean they will follow you back - but sometimes they do, and as you contribute more to the website, the more you’ll be discovered - and hopefully if your audio is something people like, you’ll be followed by other users.

Adding your tracks to groups is an easy way to promote your audio, but first you need to find some groups to join. Use the search box at the top of any page to find groups that compliment your music - so if you are a Deep House DJ for example, you’ll use groups such as DEEP, Deep House and Techno and maybe DJ Mixes. Adding tracks to a group is quick and easy - although some are moderated to filter out spam submissions, but even within those groups your tracks show up in the group within a day.

You can use the SoundCloud widget to promote your tracks outside of the website, you can place your track on your own website as well as embed the player on your MySpace page, there’s even a Facebook application which allows you to add selected tracks to your profile page. This is a good way of telling people outside of SoundCloud that you have an account - maybe they’re also on the site but haven’t found your profile yet.

As with all Social Networks, you only get out what you put in - and SoundCloud is no different. You’ve got to join the community to get your tracks and mixes listened to, take the time to listen to other peoples music (this isn’t hard work as there is a lot of really good music on there), if you like a track - add it to your favourites, it only takes one click. If you really like the track, tell the user by way of a comment. SoundCloud has a really nice solution for comments, timed ones - you can make a comment at a precise moment within the audio, this allows you to talk about a specific track in a mix, or for example the breakdown in a single track. You can also add non-timed comments about the whole piece.

Taking the time to join groups, listen to other users tracks, adding favourites and making comments is a great way to make yourself seen on the site - if you’re providing helpful or positive comments then there is a good chance the deed will be repaid.

Here’s 5 tips to get you started;

1. When signing up, fill in as much information as possible - don’t go over the top, but people want to know a little bit about you when visiting your profile, a blank profile isn’t the best welcome.
2. Upload only your best tracks and / or mixes.
3. Join groups and add your audio to them.
4. Promote your audio outside of SoundCloud, sync your Twitter account, add the widget to your MySpace or personal website, and add the application to your Facebook profile
5. Join the community, listen to other peoples tracks - especially those within the groups you’ve joined, add favourites and make comments to tracks you like.

The Art of the Mix Tape

Well, it used to be a tape, a c90 cassette recorded straight out of the mixer - and the only plus point was that you’d get to take a pause after 45 minutes when the tape would have to be turned over.

Then came the mini disc, and the CD recorder - both using the same technique as the trusty cassette - recorded straight from what was being played through the mixer. Live. No going back if you fluffed up a mix, the whole thing would have to be recorded again from the start - talk about pressure!

Then came the laptops, Serato, Traktor and Ableton - mixes that could be laid down, tweaked and adjusted, re-arranged and edited until you’re 100% happy with it. Suddenly everyone was able to make a mix that was technically flawless, everything mixed perfectly, all the tracks at the same levels and sounding just like they would on a Renaissance, Ministry or Global Underground release… except for one detail. One minor point that hasn’t changed since the original cassette mix recordings - the mix still contains a series of individual tracks sequenced in a particular order. Mess that part up and it doesn’t really matter how technically fantastic the mix is.

So, are there any rules to sequencing the perfect mix? Yes, there are some, but please note many of the following are personal ones that I try to stick to, and in places are ones that suite the deep / techy house music that I play.

A start, middle and end. Consider your mix to be a story, a journey - don’t just start off and continue the mix on the same tempo and energy, build your mix a little bit with each track - the next track should progress and gain, build on the previous track - this is also effective when putting a mix together of different styles.

Throw in a lost classic. Who says that your promotional mixes have to be full of brand new releases, and even yet to be released track. Digging up an old track that may of been long forgotten, and one that fits into the style of the rest of tracks will give your mix a sense of credibility - you’ve been into this music for a while and you know and appreciate it’s history.

End strong. It’s going to be the track that people remember on your mix - and could reflect on the whole mix, if it ends with a bit of a flop then who ever is listening will more than likely forget the whole mix pretty quickly. The same is almost true of the first track - start strong and get the listeners attention quickly.

Cramming. If you play a range of styles - a 75 minute mix CD may not be the best place to show them all. If you’re trying to fit everything in that you do, it could turn into a mess. Try and stick to a smaller portion and pick out the best tracks. I play deep, soulful and techy house - but for each mix I do I only focus on one or at the most two of those styles.

Listening Environment. Remember, this mix is likely to be listened to at home, in the car, at work - not at a nightclub where you might be intending it to. Pitching you mix down a couple of BPM’s to suite the users surroundings can definitely make it more listen-able.

So, there’s a couple of suggestions from me - do you have any?

Poem…..

As we are quite an ‘arty’ bunch here at the inflatable house, I thought I’d further compound this by posting a little poem I happened across. I wont go into too much detail, but those that know the subject matter will get it. If not then just appreciate it for it’s fluidity and prose.

House is a feeling….

Burning Mixes using Cue Sheets on OS X

Finally, after nearly 4 years (on and off) of looking how to take a long DJ mix and use a .cue sheet to the burn the CD with separate track marks. For all this time, whenever I’ve decided to burn a mix on to CD, I’ve had to open the mix in Bias Peak and have had to find and cut the tracks out and save them as individual files. This is time consuming and not issue free - occasionally, and it’s easy to do, Peak will miss the end of a audio selection and you end up missing milliseconds of audio from tracks, the result is a skip / jump at the end of tracks. It’s also time consuming.

The solution is to create a .cue file to sit along side your mp3 or wav file that tells the burning software when to create a track mark in your mix. The only piece of software available on Mac OS X that will burn .cue audio files is Liquid CD. And the best part - it’s free and available for both 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard).

Here is an example of the introduction to the .cue file as well as the layout for an individual track.

TITLE “Summer 2009″
PERFORMER “Martin Lucas”
FILE “SummerPromo2009.wav” WAV
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE “Midnight (Manuel Tur & DPlay Remix)”
PERFORMER “Jamc Groove”
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE “Dub By The River (Soultourist Re-Dub)”
PERFORMER “Pulshar & Soultourist”
INDEX 01 05:35:31
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE “Let It Go”
PERFORMER “Nikola Gala”
INDEX 01 09:17:52

I tried using both a mp3 and a wav as the audio file and the mp3 seemed to create very very small skips in the transitions from track to track - I took this to be an issue with the burning software splicing a mp3 file, so I tried a wav (converted from a 320kps mp3 in itunes) and the burnt the disc, the skips were no longer present.

This has been available on PC for ages, Nero and Roxio both do it and are usually installed with Windows when you buy a new PC. But, now finally I can do this on a Mac. Thank you Liquid CD!