How To Get Your First 1000 SoundCloud Followers In 16 Steps

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Introduction

• So, youve created a KILLER new track, hit the
  upload button, and then waited for the followers
  to start pouring in to hear your brilliant new
  musical masterpiece.
• Unfortunately, all you heard were crickets. Of
  course your cousin visited the site and said it
  was AWESOME. Hes your 1 fan
• But hes also your ONLY supporter
• Because youre missing a critical piece of the
  puzzle.
• It doesnt matter how great your music is.
  Without actively promoting your music, your
  SoundCloud page is STILL going to be a ghost
  town.

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1. Make EPIC music regularly

• if you never finish any of your loops and WiPs,
  or if youre too scared of criticism, then youre
  not going to get far. You have to force yourself
  to COMPLETE your tracks, and spend time to make
  them sound awesome they should not be too
  repetitive, they should not be overly complicated
  and difficult to listen to, they should make
  people feel something, whether its excitement or
  despair whatever your intention is with the
  track. But thats a story for another post. You
  get the idea make the best music you can, and
  make loads of it.
• A lot of you might say that you dont have the
  time, but its all about your priorities. Did you
  need to go out and sink 8 pints of beer last
  night, and be hungover all day today? Probably
  not. Could you have used that time and all of
  today to make some epic music instead?

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2. Build your network of friends connections

• How will this help you? Once you have real
  friends with other sound cloud users, theyll
  help you promote your music in lots of different
  ways (that Ill get into in a minute).
• The key to developing real relationships is to
  show genuine interest and offer real value to
  others, instead of always thinking about whats
  in it for you.
• Weve all seen those people who follow 2000
  people (the maximum number) and like everything
  in their dashboard, without properly engaging
  with you. DONT be another one of those guys
  its obvious that youre spam-liking and
  spam-following and thats not a good look.

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Heres how to do it

• 1. Find people whose music you like.2. Like,
  repost, comment on their songs.3. Find them on
  Facebook and like their Facebook page, then
  comment on their Facebook page4. After a couple
  of weeks of steps 1, 2 and 3, send them a message
  on SoundCloud ask them how they made this sound
  or that snare, and let them know that youve
  shared their music with your followers on
  SoundCloud, Facebook etc.
• Basically, get a conversation going and show them
  that youre willing to help them out.
• If you do this with 10 people, youll be able to
  reap a lot of benefits including growing your
  audience.

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3. Google Plus Communities

• Now when it comes to other social media sites,
  there are two that I highly recommend Facebook
  and Google Plus. Yes, its true. Google Plus is
  here to stay, and its a great told for getting
  hundreds of people to hear your new musical
  creation, regardless of how many followers you
  have.
• First, youll need to set up a decent Google Plus
  profile, and then the real fun starts Google
  Plus Communities. These are the secret weapon
  inside G. They are basically large groups of
  people based around common interests. There are
  communities for almost every genre of music
  imaginable house, dubstep, electro, drum and
  bass you name it!

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Heres what to do

• A. Start engaging with between 5 and 10 related
  communities. What does this mean?- voting up
  other peoples posts- responding to other
  peoples posts- adding VALUE to the conversation
• B. AFTER youve engaged with people, whenever you
  have a great new piece of music to share, just
  post a link to your sound cloud in your top 5
  10 communities and ask people to share it and
  follow you on SoundCloud.

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4. Facebook Groups

• If youre already an avid Facebook fan, youre
  probably already a member of some of the groups
  on there. And there are many more on Facebook
  than there are on G (I still prefer G because
  its less crowded and there seem to be less
  braindead people on there compared with
  Facebook).
• Heres what youll do
• A. Search for your genre(s) of music and narrow
  your search to groupsB. Join 10 to 20 Facebook
  groups related to your kind of musicC. Search
  for groups related to equipment like Ableton,
  Logic Pro, Native Instruments and join some of
  those groups tooD. Engage in the conversation
  (just like I told you to do with GE. Once you
  have a musical masterpiece you want to share,
  drop a link in each of these groups
• Once you start making use of Facebook groups and
  Google Plus communities, youll see a real surge
  in the number of people listening to your music.

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Some Statistics

• As an example, I recently released a new drum and
  bass track on SoundCloud. I usually get around 50
  listens to my music each day, but by promoting my
  song on other social media platforms, I got close
  to 400 listens in one day

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5. Tagging

• Make your music is searchable and easily findable
  for people searching for music in SoundCloud. The
  more tags, the easier to find and the more plays
  you will get. Here are some ideas for tags to
  give your new track
• - genre tags (and related genres)- similar style
  record label names- similar artist names-
  adjectives that describe the mood of your song-
  other similar songs by other well known artists

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5. Leave comments, and respond to comments on
your music.

• And make sure that the comments you leave are
  useful, meaningful, and not just rad or sick
  When you show that youve put some thought into
  your comment, it gets noticed, not just by the
  person whose song you are making a comment on,
  but by other people who listen to his or her
  song. If people notice a pattern of you writing
  great comments, some of them will come and check
  your music out.
• Also, the people who get your useful comments
  will appreciate it and will be more likely to
  check your profile out and follow you.

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6. Collaborate with your new connections

• Heres the beauty of doing a collaboration You
  do half the work and get extra exposure to all of
  their fan base as well as your own. You also help
  your friend by letting him or her get exposure to
  all of your fan base!
• Collabing also helps you to discover new
  techniques and approaches to making music by
  seeing in depth how another person does it. This
  will help you grow your skills.

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7. Get on the remix tip

• Remix a popular song that is current and will be
  searched for by millions of people. This can
  bring a ton of new listeners to your page, and if
  your remix is decent, youll convert a ton of
  those visitors into followers. You can remix
  music of a similar genre to your own, or you can
  experiment and remix something completely
  different see whether this gets better results
  or not.

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8. Forums the unsung hero.

• There is just about a forum for every type of
  music online, and millions of conversations are
  happening every day in forums.
• You get laser targeted ears on your music, and it
  is completely free. There is no other strategy
  that works as well as marketing your music in
  forums.
• The approach here is just like with G
  Communities and Facebook Groups.
• But remember no one is gonna listen if you just
  post links to your own music without engaging
  with other people first and adding some value.
  Contribute to conversations first, post links
  later. Trust me, youll get a lot more exposure
  and youll also get to know a lot of cool peeps
  along the way!

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9. Get a great logo to use everywhere online

• A big part of getting recognition for your music
  is in your branding. Think about it if you have
  a consistent logo image that people see around
  the web in forums, social media sites (including
  SoundCloud), over time they will become more
  familiar with you.
• You have two options hereA. Get good at using
  Photoshop orB. Get a graphic designer to make it
  for you
• Now, if you dont have any graphic design friends
  who can make it for free, you can pay as little
  as 5 to get your logo made on Fiverr.com

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10. Start publishing DJ mixes on SoundCloud

• How can mixing songs together help you grow your
  SoundCloud following? Simple by getting all the
  people whose music you feature in your mix to
  share the link on their SoundCloud profile (by
  reposting) and their Facebook fan page and G
  profiles, bringing in a ton of listeners and new
  followers in the process!
• And guess what! You dont need turntables to
  create a mix you can do it in your DAW. And
  many people do!
• Find about 20 songs that you want to include in
  your mix. A good chunk of them should be your
  friends mixes friends youve made on
  SoundCloud. In the description, link out to all
  of the artists whose tracks you used and include
  a track list. Ask them to repost it on SoundCloud
  (even if it is just for a week).
• Next, send a SoundCloud/Facebook message all of
  the people whose music you used and tell them you
  included their song in your mix, and ask them to
  share it on Facebook and G.

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11. Start DJing around town

• Even if you dont get paid at first (which you
  more than likely will not), get your music out
  there by getting it heard in clubs and bars
  around town.
• Playing out in bars and clubs will help you to
  make connections, see how people react to your
  music, build your fan base and have a blast while
  doing it! The connections you make from DJing
  will include many other DJs, who will play your
  music in their DJ sets (especially if you ask
  them to!)
• In an interview I did with Papa Skunk, he
  explains how DJing has helped him grow his fan
  base much bigger, and how it has helped him earn
  some extra money and make great connections along
  the way!

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12. Think about what to write in your new songs
SoundCloud description

• One thing that The EDM Networks SoundCloud
  promotion channels do to get more ears on the
  music they post is this
• Tell people to click the repost button if they
  like the song! Heres an example of what they did
  with my track Android Love on Glitchhop The
  EDM Network (near the bottom of the picture)

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13. Join SoundCloud groups

• Just like using G and Facebook communities,
  another thing you can do is use SoundCloud groups
  to share your music and get more ears on it.
• Just search for groups by genre and other related
  keywords, join them and start sharing your music
  in them. I recommend you to join around 100
  groups. Why? Because you are able to share each
  song with up to 75 groups, even with a free
  SoundCloud account!
• Focus on groups that have a large number of
  members and are closely related to your styles of
  music. The bigger the group, the more people will
  hear your music.

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14. Consider going pro

• So far, all of the points I have explained
  require no money (except if you decide to get a
  logo done on Fiverr.com)
• However, you may want to think about upgrading
  your plan to make use of longer upload time. This
  can be very useful if you start posting DJ mixes.
  The other advantages of going pro are the
  spotlight feature and statistics (which I dont
  think will help you grow your audience, so Im
  not recommending it).

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15. Offer your own tracks for remixing

• By making it obvious in the title of your track
  that you are offering the track for remixing, you
  might get some unexpected and pleasing results.
  If people are remixing your tracks and sharing
  their remixes with their fans, that will in turn
  help to get your name out there.

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16. Never fake it

• Perhaps youve heard of the amount of people who
  spend money to buy fake likes and followers on
  SoundCloud, Facebook and other social sites these
  days. In fact, according to Aaron Simpson of
  Simplify Recordings, the problem has become an
  epidemic in the music industry.
• At the end of the day, it is blatantly obvious
  when you are taking shortcuts to appear to be
  more popular than you actually are, and when
  people smell a rat, its not a god look.
• Sure, everyone wants recognition for what they
  do, but people respect recognition thats earned,
  not bought.
• Check out this article  on 5Chicago.com about it.

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Conclusion

• In conclusion, youll hopefully see that the
  benefits youll get out of SoundCloud are
  directly related to how much effort you put into
  it (in much the same way as the rest of life!)
• If reaching your first 1000 followers is your
  ultimate goal at the moment, hopefully these tips
  will help you. Stay positive and happy producing
  and promoting!
•  Thanks for reading this far! Leave a comment in
  the box below and let me know any other ideas you
  have to grow your fan base online!
• Additional Resources
• beantownboogiedown.com seven tips for more
  listenerssoundcloud.com building your
  community

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