Exciting things are happening in and around SoundCloud these days. Following the deal that kept the company afloat in the face of all their financial troubles and the looming possibility of a shutdown, SoundCloud launched a better analytics dashboard designed to make your life easier.

Here are the newest developments on the platform that you should know about — taking advantage of them as soon as possible could help your career more than you think.

New Funding, New Management

SoundCloud, it seems, is slowly getting back on its feet. They grabbed a large funding deal that includes changing the management, and it should be good for artists and fans alike.

It looks like SoundCloud isn’t going away, as some have feared, and they have a lot of changes in store for us. For example, shortly before they confirmed their funding deal with the global merchant bank The Raine Group and investment company Temasek Capital Management, they launched the SoundCloud Next Wave documentary series.

Alexander Ljung. Founder and Chairman of SoundCloud

Image credit: EUROPEANCEO 

In the same blog post that announced SoundCloud’s new funding, Alexander Ljung announced that, though he will remain in the company as chairman of the board, SoundCloud is bringing in new people as CEO and COO.

SoundCloud’s new CEO and COO are Kerry Trainor and Mike Weissman respectively. Both held the same positions at the video-sharing website Vimeo.

That’s not all.

SoundCloud Analytics

Less than two weeks after Ljung’s announcement, new stats were added to SoundCloud Pulse, SoundCloud’s on-the-go data analytics dashboard for understanding play stats.

So, do you know that it’s now possible to discover your top listeners via the SoundCloud Pulse app? Yes, the update includes Top Listeners, Top Countries, and Top Cities, so creators can see who their most engaged fans are, and what city and country they're from.

Image credit: SoundCloud

If you are interested in naturally boosting your plays, by the way, you should look into buying SoundCloud Plays and learn how purchasing Plays can augment your organic marketing campaigns.

New users will discover you more easily based on the high number of plays on your tracks. Listeners tend to take the play count as a sign of the quality of the track. So, the higher your play counts are, the more likely they’ll be to attract new organic listeners.

Bought plays will skew your stats, but you’ll just have to keep this in mind when examining your analytics.

Most recently, SoundCloud also added an important new playlist stat that you can access on the web and through the app.

The New Playlist Stat Update

The new playlist stat update makes it possible to know not only who’s listening to your tracks, but also to find and connect with curators on the platform who are including your uploads in their playlists.

With this update, you'll know who's sharing your tracks in a playlist and how many plays are coming from those playlists. In short, you'll gain insights into who is playing your track and how, as well as opportunities to engage with the curators of those playlists.

The stat will show you all the playlists your tracks are included in and even the ranking of the playlist on the platform. On the web, it looks like this.

Image credit: SoundCloud

SoundCloud also redesigned the stats web interface. It’s now more intuitive and the visualized stats’ look and feel contributes to a better analytics experience overall, which is SoundCloud’s goal.

Image credit: SoundCloud

How to Use Your SoundCloud Stats

As any marketer would tell you, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. So now that you know of the new stat updates, use your stats and measure how your tracks are doing on the platform. Improve your play count, increase your likes, get more engagement, and strengthen your follower count by looking at how your audience is responding to your music and where your listeners are from.

To navigate to your stats, click “Stats” on the right side of your profile. The next page will show you recent plays, likes, comments, reposts, and downloads for all your tracks.

Image credit: SoundCloud

Your activities are represented by graphs that highlight five of your most popular tracks for a particular timeframe. If you hover over the graph, you'll see more granular information that will help you monitor your track's performance for each day.

Image credit: SoundCloud

The purpose of your enhanced SoundCloud analytics dashboard is to help you make more informed changes in your uploading and marketing habits, or even the kind of songs you upload. It’s there to help you grow your fans and music so make sure you are getting useful insights from it.

Learn more about how you can use your stats and find out which of your uploads are most popular among your fans to grow your following on the channel.

If you want to kickstart this process, you can buy SoundCloud Plays or Followers. Bought Plays and Followers can drive real users to your account organically. When they listen to your music and like it, they won’t hesitate to follow you too. Bought social signals will help you look popular and encourage more people to follow you.

Continue growing your channel on SoundCloud. Stay at the center of all the changes happening and don’t get left behind. Learn how you can use your stats effectively and boost your performance with bought Followers or Plays to enhance those effects even more.

The Future of SoundCloud

SoundCloud is not closing down yet. Indeed, the new management along with the funding bring with them hope and relief for those worried about their uploaded music on the platform, and what that might mean for their careers.

It's interesting to see what Kerry Trainor, the new CEO who helped make Vimeo what it is today, will do for SoundCloud. He was instrumental to Vimeo's expansion, which is due mostly to the fact that instead of being just another YouTube with amateur viral videos, they focus on making high-quality films as their core product.

As early as now, with the launch of the Next Wave, we're seeing that he's also putting the focus on what makes SoundCloud special — its homegrown talent.

On top of all that, let’s not also forget that SoundCloud is still one of the most downloaded and best apps for music streaming. So, indeed, things are looking up. Whether it will get bigger or die off only time will tell, but it looks like it’s sticking around for the foreseeable future.

Small Update, Important Implications!

This new stat update may be a minor one but it does indicate the direction this new management will take.

Unattractive subscription plans and a lack of advertising on the platform are often seen as the reasons for SoundCloud's lack of growth. However, it seems like this management's focus will still not be on subscriptions or advertising.

With this stat update and the Next Wave campaign, it looks like the new management wants to put the focus on the people that make SoundCloud what it is. It wants to highlight indie music scenes, DJ remixes and garage demos you can't find anywhere else. It wants to focus on you, the artist, and it might just succeed by doing that.

Date: November 15, 2017 / Categories: New Stuff, / Author: Chell