How to make the most of Soundcloud

Due the ease of torrenting and downloading music for free, being able to monitor the download of your music is an attractive prospect. This is where Soundcloud comes in because you can upload your music and receive data on the number of plays and downloads of each song. The free Soundcloud profile allows for 120 upload minutes and up to 100 downloads per track. Full details of the breakdown of each price plan and what they offer can be found here http://soundcloud.com/premium/free.

How to make the most of Soundcloud:

The free profile on Soundcloud is enough for a new band. Once you have reach 100 downloads per track, I think there are better options from which to share your music but Soundcloud is a great starting point. So what is the best way to get to 100 downloads?
Firstly, use a link to your Soundcloud profile on all your other online sites in order to direct as many as possible potential downloaders to a place where you can see how many people download the song.
On the Soundcloud website itself however, there are a few things you can do to increase the number of downloads. One is to add your songs to groups on a regular basis. Choose a group that matches the kind of music you have and add your song. This will make your track appear at the top of the list for songs in that group and people will listen. However, you can only add a song to one group with the free profile so check the group on a regular basis and when your song isn't high up on the group, remove it from the group and then add it again and it will be back on top. Alternatively you could add it to a different group and see if it is more popular there.
Another important tool on Soundcloud that you must take advantage of is the ability of fans to comment of a song. A little square will appear beneath the section of the track that has been commented on with a picture of the profile which commented. A song which has a bar of comments below it immediately attracts attention when scrolling through tracks on the website so I recommend that you ask your fans to give you feedback on your song and this will help to increase plays and downloads. If you have no fans you could go as far as creating extra profiles to comment on your songs but I'm going to hope that this is not a necessary course of action.


Using Soundcloud at the start of your bands is great but once you have generated some interested, use the interest to try and sell your music and I will cover the best methods of doing this soon.