How to leverage streaming aggregators to boost your SoundCloud
(By Oliver Cox)
Online streaming aggregators like SongDrop and Playmoss let listeners create a playlist from multiple sources (SoundCloud, YouTube, Bandcamp etc.) – how can you use these services to grow your audience?
Sites (and apps) like Playmoss and SongDrop come with many perks for artists. It’s likely that, in surfing, searching around and using playlists that other people have created, new listeners will bump into your music. But we want listeners not only to hear your music within the Playmoss/SongDrop etc. universe, but also to visit your SoundCloud. So, lets look at the setup on these sites and see how to make them work for you.
Make it Easy for the Seekers
Search is one of the main ways that listeners will find your music, but this doesn’t mean that you should turn your SoundCloud into a SEO-consultancy. Here are a few tweaks that should help.
Great artwork: obviously, many new artists can’t be shelling out on a fancy photographer or graphic designer, but this doesn’t mean that you need to leave your track blank or with sub-standard imagery. Why not get your artist friend to create something for your best SoundCloud tracks? You could even seek out inspiring creative commons images that suit your sound.
Take a look at the screenshot above – it shows part of the Playmoss search results for ‘country’. Take it from me, ‘If You’re Country’ is a cool song, but it’s far less eye-catching than the two other tracks because it lacks an image.
Here are the search results for ‘edm’, you might expect songs from top EDM acts like Hardwell and Avicii to show up, but no, it’s mainly anonymous EDM compilations. Nonetheless, a Knife Party Track came through – with ‘EDM’ in the title. So, make it easy for people to find your tracks, use the plenty of genre tags and maybe put genre keywords in your descriptions.
How Can I Get People Back to My SoundCloud?
Playmoss has a button on each track that listeners can click to be taken to the original – it’s up to you to make the music, artwork and title impress the listener such that they absolutely have to click and check out your SoundCloud.
SongDrop doesn’t have this feature – so if you find that people are sharing your music and adding you to playlists, your best option is to create a profile. What, yet another online profile to create? Kinda, but all you need is a name, description, image and some good tracks to give you a presence on the site, convincing users to search SoundCloud for more of your music.
How Can I Chart?
The charts on both of these sites are judged via likes, plays and shares. Your music is good enough to get likes – that’s a given. Just as on SoundCloud, if you like someone else’s track (whether it’s their track, or they merely shared it) they get a warm fuzzy notification.
So, the trick to increasing popularity through sites like this is to use them. Listen to music through them, make playlists, like and share music – this will raise awareness of you and your work. They are handy tools, so there’s no need to fake it.
Of course, these aggregators are secondary to the big cheese, SoundCloud (we can help with that). They represent, however, an important new area of people’s listening habits and, as such, you need to have your foot on the pedal. So, use these platforms honestly, dress up your tracks as best you can, and the interest will flow back to you.