The life of an indie music artist is not easy. Compared to the well-known stars, they don't have a management team at their backs. There's a lot of things they have to do on their own – production, release, and even gigs and tours.

That said, one can expect “downtime.” While artists are doing local shows, tours, or recording music, they wouldn't be releasing anything new. More prominent stars can get away with that since their music is so well-known it takes long before people forget them. Indie artists, however, must look for ways to keep fans engaged during this downtime.

So, how can indie artists accomplish that? Enter SoundCloud – one of the best and easiest marketing tools for independent music artists. 

The latest reports say that SoundCloud has over 175 million monthly active users. They come to SoundCloud to listen to more than 200 million tracks on the platform. That makes one thing obvious: it is the place to be for indie artists. Just think of those 175 million people – they are all potential fans. And you will not just attract them through SoundCloud. As a social media platform, SoundCloud also allows you to forge strong bonds with them.

So if you are an indie artist looking for more growth, it would be best to hop into SoundCloud. Here are some tips on how you can use the platform as a marketing tool:

Use SoundCloud Plays To Keep The Momentum Going

Again, there will be a perceived downtime even if you are doing something important like recording new tracks or touring. Besides, it can be difficult to measure growth without a consistent release schedule.

What you can do to keep the momentum going is to release unused content on SoundCloud. Maybe you have some tracks or tunes you can't fit in your official releases. Uploading them as individual releases on SoundCloud will help keep your fans engaged.

You would also get bonus points for making these tracks free to download. It will make your fans talk about it and spread the word. Consequently, it will increase your reach and visibility.

Use SoundCloud To Experiment

Experiments are critical to the success of everything. Without doing tests, one can not improve. SoundCloud offers a platform where artists can freely express their creative freedom.

Suppose you have some tracks or mixes that do not fit with the scope of your official release schedules. You can let them out on SoundCloud to see what your fans will say about them. But regardless of that, they will be pleased to receive something directly from you. 

If hip-hop or electronic/dance is your genre, you are in luck. These genres rely on mixtapes and compilations, which are essentially SoundCloud's bread and butter. It makes the platform the perfect field for your experimentations. On top of that, it's also the best tool you can have in your arsenal to keep fans engaged in between official releases. 

Use SoundCloud Plays To Promote Music On Multiple Platforms

The best thing about SoundCloud is the way it is designed. SoundCloud allows one to store tracks in one place and push them to other channels easily. No need to upload tracks on different social platforms individually. All you need to do is upload the track on SoundCloud and then hit the “share” button. You can share tracks to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and more. Indeed, this will help improve your online presence.

 It will also cause massive upticks in engagements in SoundCloud plays and followers. That makes it an even more reliable marketing tool than it already is. You can leverage it to direct people to official releases.

You can also funnel your followers from other channels to your SoundCloud page. A clever way to do this effectively is to release a SoundCloud exclusive track and announce it on your other channels, such as Instagram. This will send a wave of new followers to your SoundCloud every time you do this.

Use SoundCloud To Connect To Fans

You will hear this over and over again. It is imperative that you, as an artist, connect to your fans. You can do this easily with SoundCloud. Your tracks will have comments sections. Also, people can put their comments on specific points on the waveform. Check for these and respond to them. Utilize this section to inform your listeners what is going on and what they should expect. It will keep them thinking of you even in between releases.

Use SoundCloud To Manage Your Digital PR

Reaching out to journalists, bloggers, and influencers will also increase your visibility. Their reach is extensive. Thus, their posts and mentions can help you attract new listeners. You can send them links to your SoundCloud tracks. Through this, you can gain new fans even before your next release.

The Bottomline

Independent artists should use every marketing tool available that they can use. They help a lot at ensuring the success of their careers. SoundCloud, a social media platform revolving around music, happens to be one of them. It is an excellent tool for marketing one's music, as demonstrated above. Furthermore, it is free to use, but content creators can make a living from the platform. What can get better than that?

If you are serious about pursuing a career in the music industry, you best be on SoundCloud. It is where labels and producers look for emerging talents. And even the platform itself tries its best to help its indie artists. 

Post Malone started on SoundCloud. And look at him now- one of the most popular rappers. You could be the next big star just by being on the same platform. But even if you don't become the next Post Malone, the benefits you will get from SoundCloud will be worth joining the network. It will make your life as an indie artist more manageable.

Imagine doing what you love, earning from it, without much stress. It's the dream life! A life SoundCloud can give you.

Looking At Indie Artist Houseparty's End Experience Massive SoundCloud Growth

The world faces a lot of changes. And with it, changes social media. Sometimes, they are the culprit behind the change of people's behaviors. But most of the time, they adapt and react to what is happening today. Their relevance varies, depending on how valuable their services are in the current circumstances. 

Take Houseparty, for example. Before the pandemic, it was just another app in the app store. During the early days of the pandemic, it essentially became a must-have app. And today, as the pandemic draws closer to an end, it is being discontinued. How rapidly it changes. From 10 it quickly became 100 and then became 0. Let us take a look at what happened to it and what it means to the other apps that we love.

The Start And End Of The Houseparty

In early 2015, Life on Air Inc. released Meerkat – a video streaming app. The lifespan of the app was cut short when the developers found they wanted to focus on private chats instead of public broadcasts. Life on Air then discontinued Meerkat and released Houseparty in February 2016 to replace it. Life on Air, later on, became a subsidiary of Epic Games, creator of the global phenomenon – Fortnite.

Houseparty is designed to be a “face-to-face” social media network. It is all about group video chats and fun activities participants in the rooms can partake in. There can be eight people in a Houseparty room. They can see and talk to each other. If they want to do something more fun than just talking, they can play games. Houseparty has a collection of party games people can enjoy playing. One can access them by tapping or clicking the dice on the top right corner of the screen. Going back to the topic, Houseparty is an app that mimics the feeling of dropping by a friend's house or inviting them over to yours. The New Yorker dubs it as the ” virtual living room” of apps.

Before the pandemic, Houseparty was not that popular. Before the spring that also marked the start of the pandemic, Houseparty had been installed just 570,000 times. That's not bad of a number. But it pales in comparison to the number of times the same app was installed during the pandemic. In March 2020, Houseparty was downloaded 17.2 million times. Multiply the previous number with 20, and it still isn't equal. That is how greatly the global health crisis affected Houseparty's popularity. 

The surge in prevalence has something to do with it being an easy-to-use, fun-inducing video chatting platform. People turned to Houseparty to connect to their friends and family when they were physically apart. They used the apps' features to beat the feeling of isolation. 

Houseparty was also helped by Fortnite's popularity. Its integration with the game made more people download the app and use the service.

But as it seems, nothing (that is not Facebook or Google) can stay at the top for too long. The once number 1 social networking app on the IOS App Store has shut down this October. But before its conclusion, the group video chat app has been downloaded only about 500,000 times. That is similar to its pre-pandemic days. Perhaps, this decline is caused by people shifting back to their old behaviors. Thus, apps that are well-loved during the pandemic are slowly falling out of relevance. Even Zoom, which became very ubiquitous, is seeing lower sales. And if Zoom is affected this much, what more are the apps that are less popular than it.

Social Media And The Metaverse

On an announcement posted on Houseparty's website, it said thanked everyone that used the service. According to the post, Houseparty's mission is to make people feel together when they are physically apart. And that is precisely what it did during the pandemic. But despite Houseparty fulfilling its goal, the team behind the social media app has decided to shut it down.

The team stated that they have been busy creating new features for Epic Games. Epic Games acquired Life on Air Inc. in 2019 and has been using its values and core technology to improve its games, Fortnite notably, since then. As a result, the team behind the app became busy and wasn't able to “give the app and the community the attention it deserves.”

The blog post points at that as the reason for the shutdown. But, in reality, it was what was said first in the third paragraph. The team will be “creating new ways to have meaningful and authentic social interactions at metaverse scale across the Epic Games family.” 

Epic Games joins Facebook, Snap Inc, and many others in the race to build the metaverse. Earlier this year, the company raised $1 billion to fund this endeavor. And before that, it acquired Life on Air Inc. – a company focused on video streaming and video chats. One can say that Houseparty's end has been set in stone since the said acquisition.

The metaverse is dubbed as the next iteration of the internet. Within the metaverse, the real world, virtual reality, and augmented reality converge. It combines these separate worlds into a single one, removing the inconveniences that would otherwise be present. 

The concept of the metaverse is not new. It was in Neal Stephenson's 1992 sci-fi book: Snow Crash. But back then, it was just a vision and something that is impossible to achieve. But today, thanks to advancements in technology, the metaverse has been brought to the attention of social media and other tech companies. Looking at what we currently have, we have cryptocurrencies and NFTs. What is left is a fully immersive and interactive world where people can use and display those.

If Epic Games can successfully create its metaverse, people can expect more improvements to its flagship, Fortnite. The game is already a global phenomenon. But think of it when it becomes a part of the metaverse. It will become even bigger. That's why Epic Games is very adamant about building it.

It's pretty clear where social media platforms are heading. The future will be focused on building the metaverse, which will blur the line between what is real and what is not. 

Date: October 30, 2021 / Categories: SoundCloud Plays, / Author: Joy P