How Does SoundCloud Work?

You can start with SoundCloud’s Partner which is free and easy to join the community, share your first tracks, receive feedback and get basic stats. For you to make some money on Soundcloud and get heard you will need to subscribe to either SoundCloud Pro Unlimited or SoundCloud Repost. The SoundCloud Pro tier comes with a monthly subscription of $ 4.99 allowing you to save an unlimited number of tracks, access to all SoundCloud’s advanced insights; promote your music across SoundCloud with the DIY tool Promote on SoundCloud; the ability to replace tracks without losing your stats and more.

With the SoundCloud Repost tier for a $30 yearly subscription, you have the option to distribute unlimited music to Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, and Instagram while keeping 80% of your revenue. This also comes with SoundCloud’s exclusive features like track background art, featured profiles, and banner click-throughs; and more.

Can you make money on SoundCloud?

Independent artists across the board have been able to make money on SoundCloud since 2018; when SoundCloud Premier was re-launched with a revised set of rules. The monetization program existed before 2018 but was an invite-only beta until the program was changed a couple of years ago. The new, revamped SoundCloud Premier has become much more inclusive and allows any indie artists who self-upload tracks to make money on SoundCloud.

How do you qualify for monetization on SoundCloud?

You’ll have to tick a few boxes to qualify for monetization on SoundCloud. To start with, you need to be signed up for SoundCloud Premier to start making money from your music.

To be eligible to get heard on SoundCloud Premier, you need to be:

18 years old or above.
An independent, original creator .
A Pro or Pro Account SoundCloud member .
An artist who has at least 5,000 plays in the past month from SoundCloud monetized countries.
An account holder with no copyright strikes.

How to monetize a track to Make Money on SoundCloud?

Once you’ve signed a SoundCloud Premier agreement, you can submit a request to monetise your tracks on the platform. If you’re approved, a blue icon will appear beside your content. When you’ve got your account approved, you can monetise multiple tracks on your SoundCloud account at once by following these steps:

Step 1

Go to your tracks page and select all the tracks you want to monetize.

Step 2

Press the “Edit tracks” button and click “Monetization.”

Step 3

Double-check your metadata is correct and then press the “Enable Monetization” button.

Step 4

Press “Save,” and you’ll be notified in 24 hours whether your monetization request has been approved.

How many plays do you need on SoundCloud to get paid?

You’ll need to be signed up to SoundCloud Premier to get paid on SoundCloud. To go Premier, you need 5000 plays in the SoundCloud-approved countries listed below.

To sign up for SoundCloud Premier, your tracks need to be streamed in SoundCloud’s recognized monetized countries. These are currently the UK, Ireland, US, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands.

Where SoundCloud monetized tracks are available to stream?

Once you monetize your track on SoundCloud, your song will be made available to stream in all countries. Just double-check your SoundCloud track settings and ensure you haven’t enabled geo-blocking if you want your tracks to be streamed everywhere.

If you want to make money on SoundCloud, you’ll have to part with some of your own money first. Sadly, there’s no way to access their monetization for free – subscribing to a Pro account alone comes with a monthly charge.

Like with a lot of audio streaming platforms, selling your music on SoundCloud has a catch: the platform will keep a share of the revenues from your sales. Singers and musicians who monetize with SoundCloud Premier receive a 55% net revenue. This means that for every song you upload or own the rights to, you will earn a 55% share of the profit, while SoundCloud will keep a 45% cut.

Your income on SoundCloud is also affected by the platform’s revenue. How much you get paid will depend on how much SoundCloud makes from advertising and subscriptions, as it’s these schemes that fund the SoundCloud Premier program. If SoundCloud doesn’t perform well and their income dips, so will yours.

How does Soundcloud make money?

 

As SoundCloud’s performance and revenue will directly affect your income, it’s worth knowing how the platform makes its money. SoundCloud operates a freemium basis, meaning its core streaming is available free of charge to its users.

If people can listen to your music for free, you might wonder how you can make any money on your tracks. The SoundCloud Premier program is funded largely by premium features and advertising, meaning that – although fans can access your music for free – the platform can still make a profit and pay you revenue on your songs.

Premium features to get heard on SoundCloud like SoundCloud Go and SoundCloud Pro Unlimited require a subscription fee. The income from this, and from collaborations with big companies and brands to run ad campaigns, turn over a profit for SoundCloud and allow them to pay artists who upload tracks to the site.

SoundCloud promotion tips to make money by getting your music heard

So now you understand that SoundCloud is the largest and most important online music community to get heard. They’ve disrupted the way we understand online music distribution. They give independent artists the space they need for DIY music promotion.

But they offer tons of other useful tools as well. Using them effectively will amplify your project and get SoundCloud plays from the SoundCloud followers that matter.

Here are our 9 SoundCloud promotion tips to make money by getting your music heard:

Tag for success

Add a “Buy” link.
Tell a story with your waveform.
Get your album art right.
Share tracks privately before your release.
Publish your best.
Change the audio without losing comments, likes, and plays.
Share with care.
Link to your SoundCloud.

There are a lot of them. This simple guide will get you educated on the most useful ones for growing your following.

Hot Tip: Read our Music Promotion Guide for more tips on self-promotion and getting your music heard.

Tag for success

How can new fans find your music? Well, one of the best ways is to tag your music. Tagging makes you discoverable when a listener is searching SoundCloud. The better your tags, the easier you are to find. The best way to tag is to be honest. If you made a drum & bass track, then set the main genre to Drum & Bass. Add moods and a location to your tags as well. It all helps.

Leverage Existing Audiences

This might be confusing to say, but it’s true. There are people who are always going to be better at marketing music than you. So don’t reinvent the wheel, use these people to your advantage.

People dedicate their lives to finding and sharing music to audiences that love it, so you. Find channels on Soundcloud to get heard. Especially the ones that can share your music with larger numbers of people than you ever could. This could come in the form of

Repost channels.
Other artists with bigger followings.
Promotional channels.
Labels/collectives.
Playlisters.

Don’t ignore offsite audiences as well. Just because they don’t have larger audiences on SoundCloud, doesn’t mean a blog or YouTube channel can’t send lots of plays your way.

Make sure to utilize:

Blogs.
Hype Machine.
YouTube Channels.
Spotify Playlists.
Influencers (e.g. vloggers, Instagram accounts).
Radio stations (some play directly off SoundCloud!).

The key here is to find channels that are a good fit for your music. Don’t go messaging someone just because they have a lot of followers. They are already looking for very specific kinds of music for their tastes. So play a few of their previous uploads/shares and make a decision. Don’t be too scared if your music isn’t exactly the same as what’s already there, but if it’s too different, it’ll likely get a pass. Once you know who to send music to, then you need to figure out how.

Email is still King

How do you send a message:

that you know the recipient will get.
that goes to a place they check very often.
Also, that is simple and clear.
Using something everyone has.
that doesn’t rely on a platform that could be gone soon.

The answer? Email. It’s old, but it’s still the best. How does this relate back to SoundCloud you might ask? Email for Networking

Everyone has an email. Artists. Labels. Promo channels. Repost channels. Avid music fans. And you can communicate with them through this channel, no matter if they have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or not.

Not to say that you can’t use avenues like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Those channels are great but always try email first. And use the Hubspot extension to track email opens, you’ll thank me later.

Add a ‘Buy’ Link

Getting listens and likes is nice. But likes and listens won’t buy you that new mic you’ve been eyeing. Luckily SoundCloud lets you add a ‘Buy’ link to your track upload. Just click on the ‘Metadata’ tab when you’re uploading.

Add the right links: Buy on iTunes, Beatport, Juno, Bandcamp or whatever else you use to sell your music online.

Hot Tip: If you have a pro account you can change the button text to anything you want. Change it to Stream on Spotify and link to get some extra streaming juice. Or write ‘Donate’ and link to a Patreon or a PayPal. You’ll be surprised how many super-fans out there will support your music.

Tell A Story With Your Waveform

SoundCloud allows fans to comment on your waveform. But y’know who else should be commenting on the waveform? YOU!

Use the waveform comments to tell your fans and community about your process. Be transparent about how you made your track. Ask for feedback and mention specific sections.

For example: If you’re not sure about a section of your track, comment on the waveform where the part starts. Something like: “Not sure about the bass here. Let me know what you think” is the perfect play for getting feedback from your community. You don’t have to be completely done with a track to publish it either. Publish drafts, get feedback, and make your music better.

Get your album art right

“Album art matters. Especially on SoundCloud.”

If your track gets embed on a blog your artwork will be there. If you share your track to Facebook your album art goes there too. Your album art or track artwork represents your music no matter where it goes. So it’s mega important.

Before anyone hits play the artwork attached to your track has to stand out. So make it count and choose something that represents your music and you. Your album art or track artwork represents your music no matter where it goes. Your album art or track artwork represents your music no matter where it goes.

For best results always use a JPG or a PNG that’s at least 800 x 800 pixels.
Hot Tip: Album art is a perfect reason to invest a bit of money into your project. If you can’t make the image you want yourself, then hire a designer or photographer that fits your budget.

Share tracks privately before your release

“SoundCloud lets you share private links to your tracks.”

It’s great for sharing unfinished tracks with collaborators, sending demos to labels or blogs, or contacting other outlets like radio stations with exclusives. Sharing a private link gives your music the personal touch and a sense of exclusivity that is great for reaching out to tastemakers.

Sharing a private link gives your music the personal touch and a sense of exclusivity that is great for reaching out to tastemakers. It’s super easy to do. Just upload a track and set it to private. Save it and go to your profile. Click the track you want to share privately and hit the ‘share’ button below the waveform.

Plus, you can reset the the private link at any time to make your private links time sensitive.

Publish your best

Your track is finally done. You worked long and hard on it. You’re finally happy with how it sounds and you think it’s ready for the world. So you click share and sit back waiting for those plays. It’s a hit! The track gets some nice buzz and people seem to be liking it!

Change the audio without losing Comments, likes and plays

“Don’t fret. With a Pro subscription on SoundCloud, you can swap out the audio on any SoundCloud upload at any time.”

And the best part? You don’t lose all those plays, likes and comments from your fans. It’s perfect for sharing unfinished songs to get feedback. Tweak your track based on the critiques and re-upload any time. Hitting share doesn’t have to be final. Swap the audio and make sharing part of your production process.

Share with care

Don’t just post your own music. Re-post artists that you’re excited about or songs and mixes that you can’t stop listening to.

Sharing other artists and helping your audience discover new music builds trust and authority and is a really humble move. If you hear something, say something! If you hear something, say something!

You SoundCloud is a community. So support it by sharing other artists in your feed. If you share other artist’s music there’s a better chance they’ll share yours! Reposting another artist’s music is a great first step to starting a relationship as well. Relationships that lead to gigs, collaborations and helpful partnerships. All that good community stuff. So build the community you want to be a part of.

Link to your SoundCloud

“Sharing your new tracks with your SoundCloud community is great. But why stop there? Put your tracks out into the world!”

Put your tracks out into the world! Share them to all your promotion platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Once you upload a track share it to all your platforms under the ‘Share’ tab. You can also auto-post your tracks to all your social platforms automatically by linking your accounts. Just head over to your Account Settings to manage your Connections.

Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are all connectable for auto-posting. Connect your accounts and get your tracks into all those ears to get heard on SoundCloud!

Make Your Music Discoverable

Now that the ‘Discover’ tab exists on Soundcloud, the aim is to get your music featured on this new avenue of discovery. The best way to do that is metadata. To get heard, tell Soundcloud what your music is, and give it the best chance on the platform.

There are a few key ways to do this:

Correct Genre tags.
Relevant track tags.
Name your track appropriately.
Utilize the description.
Get other engagement (likes, comments etc.).

You might be wondering why I’ve bolded ‘Correct Genre tags’, and that’s because it’s probably one of the most important factors in SoundCloud deciding where your music will be placed.

Pro Tip: Buy Soundcloud plays and Likes To Make Money On SoundCloud

Soundcloud is currently one of the largest audio platforms worldwide where musicians, producers, and DJs share music. An essential feature of Soundcloud is that all audio files have a unique URL so that you can listen to music at the push of a button. This promotes the distribution of all audio content on Soundcloud.

Almost every decent musician uses Soundcloud for this reason. Often times this is combined with Facebook or Twitter to reach a larger audience. Another important feature is the ability to follow users and like or repost the uploaded tracks. If you follow other users, their tracks appear in the so-called stream. So, if you want to get heard on SoundCloud, buying SoundCloud likes, plays and followers is surely the best way to get ahead of the competition and make more money on SoundCloud.