A recap of SoundCloud-related music tips from artists who appeared in our weekly Sound Advice column this year.
This year, we launched Sound Advice, a weekly interview series spotlighting artists’ creative process and their SoundCloud journeys. As the inaugural year draws to a close we’ve compiled some of our favorite tips from the artists we’ve featured – let these inspire you to get creative, connect with your audience, and dive deep into our Next Pro features to take your career to new heights.
See all of our Sound Advice columns here
Upload and tweak demos to check the pulse
“I find it way more fun to put something out that’s really new or that isn’t even scheduled for release officially. We have this pattern of putting demos out and letting them live for a bit before making them private again. It can be an interesting way of checking the pulse, and seeing what gets a reaction. I also love that you can switch things out, such as artwork or the master… [without losing] your comments or interactions.”- Cole Randall of Swedish indie-folk duo Flora Cash
Learn more about replacing a track’s audio file
Organize & distribute demos with private playlists and links
“Myself and a lot of artists I know use SoundCloud [private playlists] a lot for demos – sharing them with labels, management or promoters. Not everyone wants to have to log-in to a service to get promos and not everyone has the space to download large WAVs. It’s also a nice way of keeping things organized. Otherwise people are going to forget… were all those promos in a DM or a text or an email? Recently, I sent around a massive package of 40 or 50 demos as a SoundCloud link, and it’s great because I can continually update it. I can reshuffle the songs, and put the best or the newest stuff at the top to refresh things. You can send out different links to different groups. It’s really interesting getting the feedback from the different points, all collected in one centralized location.” - Juno-nominated Canadian electronic music producer ATTLAS
Learn more about sharing private links with SoundCloud
Use Pre-Save Feature to Put Your Release Directly in Fans’ Inboxes
“There’s almost no reason not to use the Pre-Save feature. Promotion is a very necessary evil. If you’re telling people you have new music coming out, they'll see the announcement, but who is going to remember to look it up again after that? You might as well give them as many opportunities as possible to do something about it.” - Hyper-pop fave Braden Ross
Using the Fans tool to find and reach out to your biggest fans
Distribute your music easily with NextPro
“Right now I’m doing everything through Soundcloud’s Next Pro distribution. In May 2022, I committed to it so it’s been like 100 releases by now. My stuff has been streaming really well, so I don’t know if that’s a testament to SoundCloud or me, or both. Uploading the stuff for distribution is super easy. I’ve worked with a lot of distributors and it’s probably the easiest portal of the bunch. Alt-country crooner Skrizzly Adams
Learn more about distributing with SoundCloud for Artists
Take advantage of SoundCloud’s immediacy
“[SoundCloud] was the first place I could check my insights and what my numbers are and where my fans are. You can even see their usernames; I like to see which profiles are playing my stuff all the time. I’ve always loved how you can just upload and it’s not a waiting process. If I’m feeling this right now, and I want people to hear this right now, people can hear this right now. Everything else takes time and there’s delays, or I’ve got to submit by a deadline.” - Chicago rapper femdot.
Learn more about using First Fans on Next Pro
Stay tuned next week for more of our favorite tips from Sound Advice, and subscribe to the newsletter for a weekly dose of ideas of how to engage fans and turbo-charge your artist profile.
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