How to get your first 1000 sound cloud followers in 16 steps

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2. Introduction
• So, you’ve created a KILLER new track, hit the upload
button, and then waited for the followers to start
pouring in to hear your brilliant new musical
masterpiece.
• Unfortunately, all you heard were crickets. Of course
your cousin visited the site and said it was AWESOME.
He’s your #1 fan
• But he’s also your ONLY supporter…
• Because you’re missing a critical piece of the puzzle.
• It doesn’t matter how great your music is. Without
actively promoting your music, your SoundCloud page
is STILL going to be a ghost town.

3. 1. Make EPIC music regularly
• if you never finish any of your loops and WiPs, or if you’re too
scared of criticism, then you’re not going to get far. You have to
force yourself to COMPLETE your tracks, and spend time to make
them sound awesome – they should not be too repetitive, they
should not be overly complicated and difficult to listen to, they
should make people feel something, whether it’s excitement or
despair – whatever your intention is with the track. But that’s a
story for another post. You get the idea – make the best music you
can, and make loads of it.
• A lot of you might say that you don’t have the time, but it’s all
about your priorities. Did you need to go out and sink 8 pints of
beer last night, and be hungover all day today? Probably not. Could
you have used that time and all of today to make some epic music
instead?

4. 2. Build your network of friends &
connections
• How will this help you? Once you have real friends with
other sound cloud users, they’ll help you promote your
music in lots of different ways (that I’ll get into in a minute).
• The key to developing real relationships is to show genuine
interest and offer real value to others, instead of always
thinking about what’s in it for you.
• We’ve all seen those people who follow 2000 people (the
maximum number) and like everything in their dashboard,
without properly engaging with you. DON’T be another one
of those guys – it’s obvious that you’re spam-liking and
spam-following and that’s not a good look.

5. Here’s how to do it:
• 1. Find people whose music you like.
2. Like, repost, comment on their songs.
3. Find them on Facebook and like their Facebook page,
then comment on their Facebook page
4. After a couple of weeks of steps 1, 2 and 3, send them a
message on SoundCloud – ask them how they made this
sound or that snare, and let them know that you’ve shared
their music with your followers on SoundCloud, Facebook
etc.
• Basically, get a conversation going and show them that
you’re willing to help them out.
• If you do this with 10 people, you’ll be able to reap a lot of
benefits including growing your audience.

6. 3. Google Plus Communities
• Now when it comes to other social media sites, there
are two that I highly recommend: Facebook and
Google Plus. Yes, it’s true. Google Plus is here to stay,
and it’s a great told for getting hundreds of people to
hear your new musical creation, regardless of how
many followers you have.
• First, you’ll need to set up a decent Google Plus profile,
and then the real fun starts: Google Plus Communities.
These are the secret weapon inside G+. They are
basically large groups of people based around common
interests. There are communities for almost every
genre of music imaginable – house, dubstep, electro,
drum and bass – you name it!

7. Here’s what to do:
• A. Start engaging with between 5 and 10 related
communities. What does this mean?
- voting up other people’s posts
- responding to other people’s posts
- adding VALUE to the conversation
• B. AFTER you’ve engaged with people, whenever
you have a great new piece of music to share, just
post a link to your sound cloud in your top 5 – 10
communities and ask people to share it and
follow you on SoundCloud.

8. 4. Facebook Groups
• If you’re already an avid Facebook fan, you’re probably already a member
of some of the groups on there. And there are many more on Facebook
than there are on G+ (I still prefer G+ because it’s less crowded and there
seem to be less braindead people on there compared with Facebook).
• Here’s what you’ll do:
• A. Search for your genre(s) of music and narrow your search to groups
B. Join 10 to 20 Facebook groups related to your kind of music
C. Search for groups related to equipment like Ableton, Logic Pro, Native
Instruments and join some of those groups too
D. Engage in the conversation (just like I told you to do with G+
E. Once you have a musical masterpiece you want to share, drop a link in
each of these groups
• Once you start making use of Facebook groups and Google Plus
communities, you’ll see a real surge in the number of people listening to
your music.

9. Some Statistics
• As an example, I recently released a new drum
and bass track on SoundCloud. I usually get
around 50 listens to my music each day, but by
promoting my song on other social media
platforms, I got close to 400 listens in one day:

10. 5. Tagging
• Make your music is searchable and easily findable
for people searching for music in SoundCloud.
The more tags, the easier to find and the more
plays you will get. Here are some ideas for tags to
give your new track:
• - genre tags (and related genres)
- similar style record label names
- similar artist names
- adjectives that describe the mood of your song
- other similar songs by other well known artists

11. 5. Leave comments, and respond to
comments on your music.
• And make sure that the comments you leave are
useful, meaningful, and not just ‘rad’ or ‘sick’… When
you show that you’ve put some thought into your
comment, it gets noticed, not just by the person whose
song you are making a comment on, but by other
people who listen to his or her song. If people notice a
pattern of you writing great comments, some of them
will come and check your music out.
• Also, the people who get your useful comments will
appreciate it and will be more likely to check your
profile out and follow you.

12. 6. Collaborate with your new
connections
• Here’s the beauty of doing a collaboration:
You do half the work and get extra exposure
to all of their fan base as well as your own.
You also help your friend by letting him or her
get exposure to all of your fan base!
• Collabing also helps you to discover new
techniques and approaches to making music
by seeing in depth how another person does
it. This will help you grow your skills.

13. 7. Get on the remix tip
• Remix a popular song that is current and will
be searched for by millions of people. This can
bring a ton of new listeners to your page, and
if your remix is decent, you’ll convert a ton of
those visitors into followers. You can remix
music of a similar genre to your own, or you
can experiment and remix something
completely different – see whether this gets
better results or not.

14. 8. Forums – the unsung hero.
• There is just about a forum for every type of music online,
and millions of conversations are happening every day in
forums.
• You get laser targeted ears on your music, and it is
completely free. There is no other strategy that works as
well as marketing your music in forums.
• The approach here is just like with G+ Communities and
Facebook Groups.
• But remember – no one is gonna listen if you just post links
to your own music without engaging with other people first
and adding some value. Contribute to conversations first,
post links later. Trust me, you’ll get a lot more exposure and
you’ll also get to know a lot of cool peeps along the way!

15. 9. Get a great logo to use everywhere
online
• A big part of getting recognition for your music is in
your branding. Think about it – if you have a consistent
logo image that people see around the web in forums,
social media sites (including SoundCloud), over time
they will become more familiar with you.
• You have two options here:
A. Get good at using Photoshop or
B. Get a graphic designer to make it for you
• Now, if you don’t have any graphic design friends who
can make it for free, you can pay as little as $5 to get
your logo made on Fiverr.com

16. 10. Start publishing DJ mixes on
SoundCloud
• How can mixing songs together help you grow your SoundCloud
following? Simple – by getting all the people whose music you
feature in your mix to share the link on their SoundCloud profile (by
reposting) and their Facebook fan page and G+ profiles, bringing in
a ton of listeners and new followers in the process!
• And guess what! You don’t need turntables to create a mix – you
can do it in your DAW. And many people do!
• Find about 20 songs that you want to include in your mix. A good
chunk of them should be your friends’ mixes – friends you’ve made
on SoundCloud. In the description, link out to all of the artists
whose tracks you used and include a track list. Ask them to repost it
on SoundCloud (even if it is just for a week).
• Next, send a SoundCloud/Facebook message all of the people
whose music you used and tell them you included their song in your
mix, and ask them to share it on Facebook and G+.

17. 11. Start DJing around town
• Even if you don’t get paid at first (which you more than
likely will not), get your music out there by getting it heard
in clubs and bars around town.
• Playing out in bars and clubs will help you to make
connections, see how people react to your music, build
your fan base and have a blast while doing it! The
connections you make from DJing will include many other
DJs, who will play your music in their DJ sets (especially if
you ask them to!)
• In an interview I did with Papa Skunk, he explains how
DJing has helped him grow his fan base much bigger, and
how it has helped him earn some extra money and make
great connections along the way!

18. 12. Think about what to write in your
new song’s SoundCloud description
• One thing that The EDM Network’s
SoundCloud promotion channels do to get
more ears on the music they post is this:
• Tell people to click the repost button if they
like the song! Here’s an example of what they
did with my track ‘Android Love’ on Glitchhop
– The EDM Network (near the bottom of the
picture):

20. 13. Join SoundCloud groups
• Just like using G+ and Facebook communities, another
thing you can do is use SoundCloud groups to share
your music and get more ears on it.
• Just search for groups by genre and other related
keywords, join them and start sharing your music in
them. I recommend you to join around 100 groups.
Why? Because you are able to share each song with up
to 75 groups, even with a free SoundCloud account!
• Focus on groups that have a large number of members
and are closely related to your styles of music. The
bigger the group, the more people will hear your
music.

21. 14. Consider going pro
• So far, all of the points I have explained require
no money (except if you decide to get a logo
done on Fiverr.com)
• However, you may want to think about upgrading
your plan to make use of longer upload time. This
can be very useful if you start posting DJ mixes.
The other advantages of going pro are the
spotlight feature and statistics (which I don’t
think will help you grow your audience, so I’m not
recommending it).

22. 15. Offer your own tracks for remixing
• By making it obvious in the title of your track
that you are offering the track for remixing,
you might get some unexpected and pleasing
results. If people are remixing your tracks and
sharing their remixes with their fans, that will
in turn help to get your name out there.

23. 16. Never fake it
• Perhaps you’ve heard of the amount of people who spend
money to buy fake likes and followers on SoundCloud,
Facebook and other social sites these days. In fact,
according to Aaron Simpson of Simplify Recordings, the
problem has become an epidemic in the music industry.
• At the end of the day, it is blatantly obvious when you are
taking shortcuts to appear to be more popular than you
actually are, and when people smell a rat, it’s not a god
look.
• Sure, everyone wants recognition for what they do, but
people respect recognition that’s earned, not bought.
• Check out this article on 5Chicago.com about it.

24. Conclusion
• In conclusion, you’ll hopefully see that the benefits you’ll
get out of SoundCloud are directly related to how much
effort you put into it (in much the same way as the rest of
life!)
• If reaching your first 1000 followers is your ultimate goal at
the moment, hopefully these tips will help you. Stay
positive and happy producing and promoting!
• Thanks for reading this far! Leave a comment in the box
below and let me know any other ideas you have to grow
your fan base online!
• Additional Resources
• beantownboogiedown.com – seven tips for more listeners
soundcloud.com – building your community

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