How Authors use social media: SoundCloud

Originally published at: https://community.envato.com/how-authors-use-social-media-soundcloud/

Being an independent Author these days isn’t easy. Not only must you be able to make high quality digital goods, but you also need to be able to self-manage, know the basics of SEO and HTML, and, of course, you need to have an understanding of social media.

Today I’d like to share a little of my experience on social media, and the networks I choose to use to bring traffic to my items.

Why I use Soundcloud

As an AudioJungle Author, I’ve found it effective to be on Soundcloud.

It’s a great tool for self-promotion and one of the most important websites in the world for musicians, where you can represent yourself, and create your own brand. You can communicate and collaborate with other musicians, and of course, it is great place for selling your digital stuff.

How to get the most from Soundcloud

Let’s start with the basics...

Your Soundcloud profile should represent the spirit of your brand. My profile image, background and name featuring a distorted triangle as an icon, and nebula space as the background align well with my sci-fi/hybrid brand of trailer music. You’re not going to look at my profile and expect to hear nursery rhymes. This is the first impression you will make on a lot of your audience, so make sure it’s memorable and accurately represents you.

Secondly to the description. Keep things short and make it engaging. Try and provide the most appropriate description of your project’s genre, and give the reader the best chance of uncovering who you are, all in one paragraph.

SoundCloud Description

As a Pro Unlimited User, I’m able to “spotlight” some of my best work, and you should do this too. Again, this is a great chance to make a first impression, communicating the spirit of your project, as well as its quality. But this also means you need to pick tracks absolutely worth listening to. This is an audience’s way into your brand of work, and this first impression will most certainly influence their decision to keep listening or not.

SoundCloud Spotlightd

As far as titling my tracks I try and stay away from tags like “Epic” or “Happy” etc., and surprisingly it hasn’t affected my listens, likes or comments - at least as far as I can tell.

Do not forget to add meaningful tags and a description. Usually, I just copy my tags and description from Audiojungle.

There are 3 tag types which I would like to mention: mood, genre and usage.

Some quick examples of each tag type:

Mood: action, adventure, battle, epic, etc

Genre: hybrid, rock, orchestral, trailer, etc

Usage: opener, title, movie, intro, etc

It’s also important to write in the “Buy-link title” section two very important workds: “Purchase License” or “MicroLicense”. This is very meaningful for customers, as they then know what to expect when purchasing.

SoundCloud Purchase License

If you have digital distributer, do not forget about track monetization.

SoundCloud Monetization

I always add my track to SoundCloud groups to get more listens, likes and comments; a very useful feature.

SoundCloud Groups

How SoundCloud affects AudioJungle sales

Now, let’s talk a little about how being on SoundCloud can affect your AudioJungle performance.

For this section I’ve taken stats from both websites and analyzed data from SoundCloud listens, referrals, and AudioJungle sales. So, let’s take a look.

One of my tracks - “Rise of the Saturn” has 4000+ listens and 80+ likes on SoundCloud. The data I’ve taken is from November 2015 - January 2016.

November 2015

As you can see there are some nice peaks with 513 listens in total.

Nice peaks, 513 listens total. Every single peak represents mostly referral activity from external sources, like YouTube and Facebook.

Here you can see I got 3 referrals from SoundCloud to my AudioJungle profile.

7 sales. No extended licenses. Here we can compare the peak somewhere near Saturday November 21 with a sale on that same day. Seems that in this particular month most sales came from direct sources, and some of them may have come from others, like Envato Mailing List, Facebook and Soundcloud

December 2015

676 listens total. As in previous months, a few peaks, that means that Rise of the Saturn had a nice impact on listens because of some external sources. Interesting to see that huge peak on Tuesday December 15 where listens almost doubled compared to November 2015.

This time I saw 9 referrals from SoundCloud to my AudioJungle profile.

And, similarly to the month before, I saw 7 sales that month, but with a few music broadcast licenses in there too.

And really nice Broadcast licenses in this month. Peaks somewhere on Friday, December 11 and Tuesday, December 15 makes sense to compare with sales on 11, 14 and 15 Dec.

January 2016

A few really nice peaks and almost 1000 listens. Compared to November, peaks almost tripled.

5 referrals from Soundcloud.

And one single sale. So it seems like January not the best month for this track, even tripled peaks made little difference.

So let’s calculate a bit here. Over 3 months I averaged 719 listens, 5-6 referrals and 5 sales. Engagement relative to referrals was 0.78% which is average for social media.

Conclusion

Soundcloud is definitely a great platform for musicians, and it has an affect on AudioJungle sales in a positive. But, if you're going to use it, I would advise upgrading to a pro account. Remember when using this platform to appropriately represent your brand. This is the first place a lot of people will discover you, and it's important to give yourself the best chance of turning that exposure into positive brand recognition and potentially, sales.
16 Likes

Excellent article! Thanks bro! :slight_smile:

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Thanks for sharing your experience ! Much appreciate that! :slightly_smiling:

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Nice article! Thanks for sharing! :slight_smile:

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Thank you! I fully agree with it!)

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Thanks for the useful information! :slightly_smiling: :+1:

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Nice stuff. How are you able to monetize your soundcloud plays?

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Very useful article! Thank you for sharing. :slightly_smiling:

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Hey, thanks for reply.
You can do this if you sell music for personal listeting on iTunes through digital distributor. Then you will be able to add your ISRC number and monetize your tracks.
Hope it helps :wink:
Cheers.

which distributor? I sell lots of my track already on iTunes…

Mine is Symphonic Distribution. When you make digital release you have ISRC number which you could paste in your SoundCloud track Metadata, and thats it.

wow. i thought it was only for OnSoundcloud members.

Really interesting and helpful article, thank you

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That’s interesting, I didn’t know that you could monetise streams if you sell on iTunes - I couldn’t see the area in Soundcloud’s Meta Data to paste in the ISRC number, where would I find it?

Hey tacoMusic,
This feature available if you have Premium/Pro subscription.
Cheers :wink:

I have Pro unlimited…still don’t see it.

In this case you should contact with your digital distibutor and clarify that situation.

are you sure you didn’t get accepted to OnSoundcloud?

No, through my distributor I am in SoundCloud Whitelist, so I am able to monetize my tracks.

interesting.good to know.