Do you use Soundcloud to promote your music?

[goavibe]

As an Ableton user of either the Lite or Full version, the answer is probably yes. In all probability, there are thousands of us posting tracks and trying to get enough buzz generated to make one of the Hot Lists. Unlike the big names who have thousands of followers, time spent on the Hot Lists can make the difference between a large number of plays and a small number.

Within the past two months, Soundcloud has quietly changed their policy for how long a track can remain on any Hot List from 4 days to 3 days. As I was recently told, this was to try and promote the "hottest" tracks. In my mind that means they are actually showing favoritism to big name artists who are on the Hot List within hours of posting a new track. Losing an extra day of promotion only hurts someone who doesn't have a huge number of followers and might take a little longer to generate enough buzz to move higher up the lists. By the time the track reaches that point, it's 3 days may be up and it fades into obscurity.

If this upsets you, like it does me, then I suggest you provide Soundcloud with some user feedback. I can guarantee that there are more of us than the big names who are on the Hot List day in and day out. And we are the ones that Soundcloud is making a profit off of. We deserve better.

[Rationalizer]

What are you trying to achieve by promoting your tracks on SoundCloud? Followers, listeners (oh yeah, they are different things) or boost in sales, perhaps?

[goavibe]

Seeing how I give all my music away for a free download, I guess it would be the former.

[Sibanger]

I didn't even know soundcloud had a 'hot list'.

[stoersignal]

I didn't even know soundcloud had a 'hot list'.

me neither

[Da hand]

Why 3 or 4 days? Why not 7?

[sporkles]

I never knew there was such a thing as a 'hot list'. All I see are my own pages and those of artists whose link I follow. I've never even thought of SC as anything but a convenient way of hosting my humble efforts and stumbling upon others' music.

[xzusa8ky]

I have a Pro SC account for years and i will stop using it this year. I got 1500 followers and i become 10.000 mails in a month with stuff from others and it is a waste of time if you ask me. People who uses SC dont buy you tracks they will only download track for free, and then bomb you with lots of crap! Maybe some people got better experiences with the cloud, but for me it seems to be a waste time....


Bye Bye Soundcloud!

[Hermanus]

I upload some of my tracks on soundcloud but I'm not using it for promotion.

I always dislike having a comment on a track saying: "cool track go listen to mine" with a brutal http link.
I like sc for discovering not to get bombed with mails.

[darkenedsoul]

Problem with this is also genres.....I would think the hot list will cater to dubstep/hip-hop/trance (maybe?) type stuff vs multiple genre hot lists (rock, ambient, dance/electronica (please separate ambient out of that genre all over the sites...lol)/etc....).

I don't think I will waste time on the Pro because it isn't cost effective for me. I pay for a hosting site on a yearly basis of $40 which I think is fair enough due to the benefits of it.

[puzzlefactory]

I never knew there was a hot list, and I certainly don't think I get enough plays to get on it anyway.

Soundcloud is starting to get annoying with all the copy and pasted spam comments and people who start to follow you without listening to your tracks (just to try to get you to follow them back). It's kind of getting like MySpace when that started to go shit.

It is handy having a free hosting site for your music. I'm sure when it gets too bad, another site will pop up to replace it (just as soundcloud did with MySpace), which will be cool for a while and then get spammed to shit again.

[phonographiq]

+1 on the spam, shits been getting heavy the last few weeks.

Has anyone rocked the new SC yet? I signed for the beta a month ago but never heard from them. I love Soundcloud but I really wish they'd take the idea further, ways of sharing with other users.

[xzusa8ky]

+1 on the spam, shits been getting heavy the last few weeks.

Has anyone rocked the new SC yet? I signed for the beta a month ago but never heard from them. I love Soundcloud but I really wish they'd take the idea further, ways of sharing with other users.

Yes i am on the beta of SC. It looks nice and so but the spam and princips are the same.......

[goavibe]

Some of the replies have been kind of funny. If you've ever clicked on the Tracks tab on the top of the page you were looking at the Hot List. That's the main list, but there are also lists for most genres. Even if you can't make it onto the main page, which is only 5 pages long, then being on one of the genre lists can really increase your play count.

I agree that the spam is pretty bad these days, which is one of the reason I like Cloudkillers so much...no spam! Also, no one ever actually clicks on a spammed link, but it does count on your comment total which is part of the algorithm they use to calculate a track's buzz. Ultimately, I don't think people know the inner workings of how some of these things on Soundcloud work because they don't make this stuff common knowledge. I had to go digging around, and start asking questions to figure out the info I was looking for.

I guess I'm just pissed that when I first joined, there were Hot Lists that covered the Last Week, Last Month, and All Time which was great promotion for any track that was on there. They got rid of those and it had been 4 days of promotion on their lists for quite a while. Now, they've lowered it again, and the only people this seems to be helping are people that don't need the help in the first place.

[nathannn]

music sales. lol.