From seeking out creative inspiration to building connections, 5 artists weigh in on different techniques for discovering new music on SoundCloud.
Welcome to Sound Advice, the weekly interview series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journey. We’ll get the inside knowledge straight from the source on how musicians, producers and creatives are leaning into the many facets of Next Pro to reach their audience and grow their careers.
Music lovers tell us all the time that they love to discover new sounds and artists on SoundCloud. From artists with millions of followers to bedroom producers uploading their first demo ever, the range of sounds and styles, microgenres and niche communities on the platform is truly endless, and our archive contains a ton of independent music you probably won’t find uploaded anywhere else. Whether DJs are seeking the latest remixes for their upcoming sets, producers are looking for new talent to collaborate with or fans are finding each other in the comments section of new tracks, there’s something for every community and type of music lover.
Everyone has their favorite method of finding music on SoundCloud, from allowing the algorithm to suggest playlists and tracks to searching genre tags or falling down the rabbit hole of your favorite artists’ Likes and Comments. We spoke with a range of artists for our Sound Advice series to find some cool advice from Apashe, Subtronics, Valentino Khan and more on how they find new music, tap into futuristic new genres and connect with collaborators on SoundCloud, as well as their suggestions on where to begin.
APASHE
“I was there at the very beginning of SoundCloud and I was part of the generation that was early on streaming. Now, I use it more to find new music. People upload stuff there that you can’t find on other streaming platforms – that for me is the strength of SoundCloud. Especially for DJs, it’s the place to find edits and discover artists. I like to go to my favorite producers and click on their ‘likes’ and see what they listen to and what they’ve liked recently. That’s how you discover people and that’s how you create that network of producers. SoundCloud is a very strong platform for creative people. It’s the place where you meet other creatives, other producers, other singers. It’s used by professionals and amateurs, which is its strength in a way. It’s important to make connections with people. It’s crazy the amount of people I know from SoundCloud.”
Read our full interview with Apashe here.
MiLES.
“I try to discover at least four new songs a week that I’m really into. There’s so many things that I’ve found on SoundCloud that I’m not totally sure I would have found anywhere else. It’s just a different culture. SoundCloud is all music, without filters or discretion. That’s really beautiful to me. First, I go off what comes on after my songs play. And then I just start clicking through the “fans also like” category. I’ll keep clicking and will find someone else, listen to that and I’ll keep going until I really don’t know where I’ve gone. Sometimes I’ve dug so deep into the rabbit hole that it’s kind of impossible to get back, and that’s where the hidden gems are. I’Il also go to certain people on SoundCloud and go through their ‘Liked’ songs. If I’m deep in it, I try to find things I’ve never heard in those playlists.”
Read our full interview with MiLES here.
Kelly Zutrau of WET
“My bandmate Joe, who is the sonic mastermind and [Wet’s] main producer, is often the one who is following people on [our SoundCloud account]. He’s very digitally savvy and spends a lot of time looking for new music. We’ll look [for new music] together as well, and I’ll also look to see what he’s liked or who he’s followed and that’s become a way for us to stay connected about what we’re inspired by. We’ll make a playlist where he’ll like things and I’ll check them out, and then we’ll talk about them, like ‘Oh, this was amazing. Let’s reach out to them,’ or ‘I love this about that [piece of music]; let’s try to incorporate some element of that into [our] song.’ We use [SoundCloud] as a tool for getting inspired and staying connected with each other’s vision of where we’re headed.”
“We’re at a point in our careers where we’re just feeling less precious about things, like, ‘Let’s just put music out and keep things going.’ Different things have different homes and will live in different places. Remixes tend to do really well on SoundCloud… because its community [includes] a lot of DJs and producers. It’s this whole other world that I do find to be very exploratory and fresh and exciting. A lot of the connections [with our remixers] were initially made on SoundCloud, such as Branchez; his remix of “The Letter Blue”) is probably the most popular remix from our EP.”
Read our full interview with Kelly Zutrau here.
Subtronics
“SoundCloud is where the community is, especially within the underground. For me, it’s the most powerful music-finding tool. Every day I’ll go on SoundCloud and find someone that is so good, I’ll be mad at myself for not discovering them earlier. And I just get to stalk all their likes and find a bunch of crazy stuff. It’s so easy to fall into the rabbit hole of stalking talented artists’ likes! Also sometimes, there will be songs that maybe haven’t even popped off as much numbers-wise, but they’ll have a huge amount of comments. That tells you that culturally, organically, a song is a big deal in the scene and it’s leaving an impact.”
“My friend Cooper Oolacile says, ‘What you feed your brain is really important to what your output ends up being.’ If you just feed your brain a bunch of generic cookie-cutter garbage, you’re not going to have very good output. So I really love SoundCloud because it helps me discover so much eclectic, unique stuff that it’s like eating healthy artistically. And it just taps you into like the immediate forefront of the cutting edge – here’s what’s going on right now, not what’s going on six months ago [that’s just now coming out] because finally there’s an industry team behind it. No. SoundCloud is like, ‘It’s immediately happening now and there’s an engaged community and everyone’s here.’ So yeah, there’s a magic to it, like 1000%. You really do feel like you’re a part of something.”
Read our full interview with Subtronics here.
Valentino Khan
“The best thing currently – and something I’ve been using heavily in the last couple years – is the Related Tracks feature. SoundCloud has gotten pretty good at understanding if you’re listening to a certain track that you might like certain other stuff. I remember listening to this Scottish dude Franck. Going on his related tracks brought me to a whole bunch of other people that are making this cool bouncy techno stuff in Scotland. The Related Tracks feature really can unlock a world that you didn’t even know existed before getting on SoundCloud.”
“The music industry will oftentimes implement a ‘gatekeeper’ when things become too Wild West for them. SoundCloud is definitely one of the last frontiers where it feels like they try to minimize the amount of gatekeeping as much as they possibly can. As an artist, it’s incredibly important to be able to go directly to my fans, and for artists that I haven’t heard of yet, it’s incredibly important to be able to directly reach people. I think SoundCloud is one of those final frontiers that really make it a point to preserve that direct connection between the fan and the artist.”
Read our full interview with Valentino Khan here.
Stay tuned next week for more of our favorite tips, and subscribe to the Sound Advice newsletter for a weekly dose of ideas of how to engage fans and turbo-charge your artist profile. See all of our Sound Advice columns here.
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