You must have heard it said that it is very easy to be a musician today. The cost of production is way lower than it used to be and it is also a lot easier to promote your music and become a star. While all of these are true, it only tells just one part of the story.

Yes, the cost of music production a lot lower than it was. This is because owning a studio that can deliver professional level music is now within the budget of most folks. The same can also be said about promoting the music.

Now here’s the other part of the story. Since the cost of production is way lower than it previously was and the means and cost of marketing the music is also way lower, almost everyone with any kind of talent is producing and marketing their songs.

To put things in perspective, it has been estimated that about 1,000 songs are uploaded to various music streaming and distribution sites by various musicians each hour. This means that about 24,000 songs are uploaded each day. In a month that will be about 720,000 and it goes on. You can read about it here.

With this amount of songs being put out each day, a new challenge is now faced by upcoming musicians. There is an oversaturation of the space which makes it more difficult for one person to stand out from the crowd. This means that you need to put some serious effort into getting your song to stand out from the rest.

Thankfully, there are a number of platforms from which you can launch your musical career if you understand how to go about it. In this article, we will be choosing just one of these platforms as our focus. We are talking about SoundCloud.

Why You Should Choose SoundCloud

This platform offers you unique opportunities that can make it easier for you to grow your musical career. First, SoundCloud has entered into licensing agreements with Warner Brothers and Universal Music. This increases the chances of your music being seen by any of these two power houses.

Secondly, there are about 76 million active users on the platform with about 175 million user-activity monthly.

SoundCloud also offers more networking opportunities than other music hosting and streaming sites. You can share content, others can share your content, you can comment on other people’s posts, they can comment on yours and you can collaborate with other artists on the platform.

It’s basically like a market place for musicians and music lovers. Best of all, people can listen to your music without paying which encourages a lot more people to come on board. Remember that is not necessarily a platform for directly monetizing your work but for building a base and popularity that will ultimately lead to monetizing opportunities.

You can read all about the unique opportunities that SoundCloud offers here: https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/24/why-soundcloud-will-be-worth-more-than-spotify/.

It All Comes Down to Plays

The main reason for having your song on SoundCloud and for looking for more followers is to have more people listen to your song. SoundCloud shows under every track the number of times it has been played, liked and reposted.

There is a tendency to want to play a track that shows a high amount of plays, likes and reposts more than one that has none. We are wired to believe that the reason why the track with higher stats has those stats must be because it offers something more than others.

This therefore means that it is not just enough for you to have a lot of followers on the platform. You also need to get them to play your songs so your stats can motivate others to play and follow you.

How to Get More Plays

What therefore is the best way to go about getting more plays of your songs on SoundCloud? There are a couple of ways to go about achieving this and we will presently look at a couple.

Make Your Profile and Song Description Magnetic

Your profile image and description can affect how easily people will click to see what you have to offer. The same goes for your song description. Put some effort into this.

Using an Attractive Music Artwork

Just as with your song description and profile, the image you use as your song’s artwork is very important.

Having a Great Song

This is clearly stating the very obvious. If your song is not great no one who listens to it will share it. You need people to listen and be excited to share it.

Sharing Your Work Across Different Social Media

Share a link to your song on your different social media platforms. This will increase your chances of having the song played.

Paying for Plays

After doing all of the above, you can complement your efforts by paying to get SoundCloud plays. You can decide how many plays you want based on your budget.

Conclusion

By combining marketing efforts across different platforms, you increase your chances of making it big. All you need is to have the right amount of followers who love your work or a big name or company that hears you and decides that you have something to offer.

Strategy is important here. This is why you should combine paid services with your organic efforts.