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.

iTunes Improvement Suggestions

I just wrote a little note to the people at Apple and iTunes with two suggestions on how to improve it’s music download store, I thought I’d share it with you.

Hello,

I have one simple request idea (I hope it’s simple anyway), and one more complicated suggestion.

First, can we please have the ability to search by record label - I am a DJ and I follow a lot of record labels, finding and buying specific tracks because they’re released on a particular label. I’d really like the ability to search for a record label, so that I can view all their releases.

Additionally, it would be great for record labels to have their own pages - like the artist pages, this is only an add on point to my suggestion - but it would be very welcome. It would help give the smaller labels that I buy music from the ability to build on their brand from within itunes - and show off their entire back catalog. Record labels are very important, especially within dance music.

Next up, the 30 second samples - these are fine for a 3 minute pop song, but for 7 / 8 minute dance music tracks, the 30 seconds that are usually provided are of no help - the majority of the time it seems to be the first 30 seconds, which is normally just beats. Now, you could say that it isn’t your fault, but this is how dance music (especially house) is structure. A 30 second sample from the middle of the track would be so much better. I don’t know if taking the preview is cropped automatically, but if it could be changed to the middle of the track, we would get a much better idea of what the track sounded like before purchasing.

Additionally, it would be great for a longer sample - Juno Download has 1 minute, Beatport has 2 minutes and DJ Download has a needle drop preview so you can listen to any part of the track in 30 second chunks, this is so helpful for DJ’s when previewing the long tracks that we usually buy. I know that there are probably some legal issues attached to the 30 second previews, but if there isn’t a restriction, then it would be so helpful to extend the previews. How about a 60 second sample for tracks over 5 minutes?

itunes is great, it’s easy to use, the price of 79p per track is very competitive when comparing it to other download sites -especially dance music focused stores like Juno Download, DJ Download and Beatport. And now that you have iTunes Plus, which gives us much better quality - iTunes my preferred download store. I just think these 2 points will help attract a lot more DJ’s to your store.

Many thanks for taking the time to read my suggestions.

So, what do you think? If you agree, then contact iTunes yourself with a similar suggestion.