Get SoundCloud Plays Quickly, Cheaply, and Often

It can be tough to get SoundCloud plays out there, especially for new artists. That’s the way it has always been in the music industry, it seems like no one wants to listen to you …until everyone wants to listen to you!

With SoundCloud you have the opportunity to push more people to listen to you using the power of digital marketing, and a hack from us. Let’s look at how to get more plays on SoundCloud quicker, build your audience, and move you from bar shows to stadium gigs.

As is the SocialRez tradition on SoundCloud related posts, read through to the end for my favorite track playing right now.

Push all of your current fans there

You already have fans on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc, and you need to push them from there to SoundCloud often. Your current fans, the ones who were there before you were famous, are the ones which will make you famous. You can always get SoundCloud plays from them, and you need them to share your SoundCloud tracks.

How you can push them is by sharing your tracks with distinct calls to action:

it’s monday. we know it sucks. go listen to us on soundcloud. clear your mind https://t.co/IgWH67zXuB

— foursix (@foursixny) June 20, 2016

A tweet like that can get SoundCloud plays in two ways:

• Your current followers/fans on Twitter will go for a listen.
• Retweets will spread your tweet to new people who will go for a listen.

Doing this on every social platform, including a place on your website, will build and build and build your SoundCloud plays as you direct people to your account.

This will also be a great time to buy some Twitter / X retweets from us. Pushing your tweets, which contain your pushes to SoundCloud and SoundCloud tracks, will help you reach a wider audience thanks to social proof.

And that’s not a theory, that’s something we actually found out in a test of our services. Read on Medium how we tested impressions for a trending hashtag and got more impressions for it through our retweet service. This can apply directly to your music and expose you to even more people who will become your fans.

Upgrading to a paid account

Sorry, but you can’t get all of your SoundCloud promotion done for free and get SoundCloud plays. You get mad when promoters think that you should play for free, and to get anywhere on SoundCloud you’ll need to spend a little.

Free accounts work great to get you started, and can be used during the point above. But once you have things moving along it’s time to move your account along too! You can choose Pro:

Both are going to do two very important things for your account’s growth:

• Increase your upload time limit from 3 hours to 6 hours.
• Give you more stats to learn about your audience from.

You’ll see why the first point is important in a moment, and you should already know that stats are the real currency in online marketing. You can use them to see which songs are popular, where they’re popular, and use that for everything from concert set list decisions, to what type of songs you’ll create in the future.

Using a SoundCloud plays service

Does this seem too obvious? Like cheating? You’re probably looking at it the wrong way. The biggest problem you’ll ever face while trying to get SoundCloud plays is, in fact, your lack of SoundCloud plays.

Remember your first bar gigs? You’d play your tracks to a nearly empty audience. People outside would keep on walking by, not even bothering to come in. But then you started building a local audience with the bar gigs filling up. You’re playing your same songs, but now you’re noticing more and more foot traffic coming in. Same songs, but more people coming in thanks to the fact that your gigs are already well attended.

Buying SoundCloud plays, using our service at that link, is just like this. When you have few plays you attract fewer people to take a listen. When you have lots of plays you attract more people to listen based solely on the number of plays. It’s like everything in life when you think about it. You have to spend money to make money. You get in a relationship and suddenly everyone wants to date you. Or, as is the case here, you have lots of SoundCloud plays and suddenly everyone is hitting the play button.

Start uploading bonus tracks, B sides, soundchecks, etc

Keeping your SoundCloud account active, with fresh content on it between album releases, is important. This is the online world where we forgot about last month’s biggest hit song already, and you need something to keep your band on the mind of even your biggest fans.

Take Demrick, for example. He has built his career from independent, to Battle Axe Records, to shared by Empire Records just this week. He has been keeping his SoundCloud account banging with freestyles over the last few months:

A beat, a collab with Dizzy Wright, and heads nodding. That’s all it is. It’s not a polished track, it’s not hours of knob twisting in the studio, it’s hip hop being made out of love and for the fans.

Not a hip hop artist? That’s cool, do a cover of a classic rock song and put that up. Do a cover of another track blowing up the top 40. Do anything that involves making more music. What’s the worst thing that could happen? People don’t listen to something you recorded during a rehearsal so you record something else.

Now that you have this consistent content, guess what you’re going to do with it? That’s right, you’re going to share it on your social media accounts, and you can read this article of ours on selling music using social media and SoundCloud to learn more. You can’t share the same songs over and over and expect to get shares. New content is what the online audience demands, and now you can supply it to them to get SoundCloud plays, social media shares, and new followers.

Getting SoundCloud plays the quick way

Stop struggling with sharing the same tracks over and over again on your free account and take the steps professional musicians take:

• Start by pushing all of your current fans there from social media and your website.
• Upgrade to a paid account to get more upload time and insightful statistics.
• Use our SoundCloud plays service to get everyone interested in you thanks your high play numbers.
• Record more content to have ready to share, and to keep your account active when you don’t have a new album.

As is the tradition here on SocialRez, here’s the track I liked on SoundCloud this week. That’s right, more Demrick, who I’ve been on for well over a year before he had a deal.