Soundcloud may appear as a simple platform made for posting songs. However, if you dig deeper, it’s a great tool to speak to your listeners through your personal brand. It’s also crucial to stand out from the mass of other music producers if you want to get listeners. Here are the 10 things that every producer can do to make their soundcloud more attractive and cool.
1. Make your profile picture fit your background
Thanks to the fact that soundcloud has borderless profile pictures, it’s possible to create custom artwork which will match your background. It certainly makes any profile look much cleaner and original. You can achieve this look yourself by putting the banner's layout into Photoshop, or hiring a designer to make a professional-looking background for you. If you want something original and easy to make, you can:
2. Use native soundcloud colors
This way you can achieve a clean look without spending too much time on designing your background. To do that, simply use the grey/white colors Soundcloud uses. A cool way of making your photos fit with the background is using Photo Booth on Mac to achieve the steezy prime look. Tip: You have to load up the color of your background in Photo Booth as a „User Backdrop“. Try it out!
3. Integrate your Snapcode with your background
Snapchat is a great way to directly speak to your listeners - especially if they’re at a young age. Showing your snapcode instead of writing your snapchat name in the description will very likely bring more traffic there. Make sure to post interesting stuff there if you’re planning to use it!
4. Customize your description and social network buttons
Make sure your description is something very concise - no one’s got the time to read your 500 word bio. Also, nowadays everyone knows what all social media icons mean. Use the opportunity to add text besides the icons to give your listeners a reason to follow you there!
5. Use artwork borders
I noticed that once you add a border frame to your track artwork, the track really stands out.
I once added a frame without even opening Photoshop - I just used Preview and simply screenshotted a zoomed-out picture! Another thing I did here was I used the hashtag space to tell listeners that there are visuals for the track in the description.
6. Have a signature artwork shape
Something I noticed to work really well is using the same artwork shapes in all of your tracks. My favourite type of such artwork is from a producer called Metsä. Not only does he use the same hexagonal shape in all of his tracks, but also he uses his own hexagonal logo in all of them. That makes you easily recognisable amongst all producers who use Tumblr pictures of girls as their artwork.
7. Use Spotlight to bring your best/recent tracks to the top
Once you’re a Pro user, you’re able to bring five of your tracks to the top of your profile. This makes it easier for listeners to check out your music without getting lost in your reposts (if you do that - if you’re not doing it yet you should start). It’s important however to give people coming to your profile a good first impression. That’s why it’s essential to bring your absolute best tracks to the top of your profile. It’s also helpful if the track’s got a lot of listens - it gives the audience social proof that the track is worth listening to.
8. Don’t use your name in track titles
For some this one may be obvious, but it’s really unnecessary to mention your name in the title of your track if it’s posted from your profile. For collabs, producers often use the shortcut „w/(name)“ - it’s something I like using a lot.
9. Customize your download buttons
From my experience, sometimes just saying „Download“ isn’t attractive enough to get lots of downloads. Something cool to do is to add Emojis like the down arrow. „Free Download ⬇️“ on the other hand works well for me!
10. Use download gates
This one is the most important from all the tips included in this article. It’s crucial nowadays to use download gates - they helped artists such as San Holo grow their Soundcloud audiences crazy fast. They enable you to get follows, reposts, likes and comments from people downloading your tracks. Only by using the follow-to-download function I got almost 20% more followers than I would have without it. I highly recommend using one!
Thank you for reading the article. I hope you found something useful amongst all of these tips! Share this article with a producer friend who needs to start using some of these strategies :)
Check out our soundcloud for sample packs and cool remakes we do tutorials on - such as this one!
Good luck with pimping your Soundcloud!
k-pizza
I’m k-pizza, a chill trap music maker who likes to share his experiences with other producers. I’m regularly going to show up with music and content at PML.
Listen: https://souncloud.com/k-pizza