Strategies for Success on SoundCloud | SoundCloud A&R Explains

Embark on an audio odyssey with Hope Hale, ANR manager at SoundCloud, as she unwraps the layers of this artist-centric platform. Transforming the music industry landscape, SoundCloud has emerged as the go-to ecosystem for artists to engage directly with their fanbase. With Hope's expertise, we delve into how the integration of the Repost distribution network and the platform's pivot towards social connectivity are revolutionizing the way musicians share their sound. Our conversation uncovers how SoundCloud stands out with its data analytics and personalized feedback, offering artists a unique toolkit to amplify their musical careers.

Strap in for an insider's guide to SoundCloud's inventive monetization tactics, including the fan-powered royalties model, a game-changer for aligning artists' earnings with listener engagement. Hope Hale shines a light on how SoundCloud has become a launchpad for genres such as electronic and hip-hop, riding the wave of viral TikTok trends to streaming stardom. We share must-know strategies for artists yearning to magnetize their SoundCloud presence and dissect the power of real-time fan feedback as a crucible for refining an artist's sound. It's a deep dive into making the most of the platform's immediacy in a fast-paced digital world.

The final act of our session with Hope Hale offers a treasure trove of strategies for SoundCloud success, from the allure of the "new and hot" charts to the curation of algorithmic and editorial playlists. Listen closely as we reveal how SoundCloud exclusives and a strong sense of community can propel artists to new heights within their niche. This episode is not just a peek behind the SoundCloud curtain; it's a masterclass in leveraging the platform's full potential for artistic triumph. Whether you're a budding musician or a seasoned producer, these insights from within the heart of SoundCloud are pure gold for anyone aspiring to leave their sonic fingerprint on the world.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Music Industry Podcast. Today we're joined by Hope Hale, also known as just Hale, just Beyonce, apparently the ANR manager at SoundCloud. Hi, how's it going? Hello, I'm good. How are you Good? Thank you Good. So I feel like the main thing people that are going to be very confused about is there's an ANR at SoundCloud, like I feel like all of us just know it's a streaming platform, just like Sposify, deezer. So what does an ANR do at SoundCloud?

Speaker 2: 0:28

I guess, just the same as what all the other ANRs do, not so much at majors but in these distributors, that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 0:39

I think how it started and why there are now ANRs at SoundCloud is because people, you know, like artists like BI Lish, post, my own will come into the SoundCloud, put in their music on SoundCloud first and then being taken away by, like major labels, being kind of like swept up into these sales and leaving SoundCloud behind, and SoundCloud weren't really gaining anything from that, even though they were kind of the platform that were breaking these big artists.

Speaker 2: 1:03

And so SoundCloud were like, okay, well, maybe we should stop that. And they had this period I think it was like 2017 where they like nearly went bust because they were losing all revenue from these artists disappearing, and they were like, okay, let's change this. So they acquired a distributor called Repost and integrated that into SoundCloud. It's still very much there, but it's rebranded to SoundCloud for artists and they were kind of finding these artists that were releasing on SoundCloud, helping them develop a little bit and then distributing to wider platforms. And so when I joined that was the team that I was on I was aniring for Repost and that was just kind of finding artists and getting them to do distro deals basically with SoundCloud.

Speaker 3: 1:52

So SoundCloud's taking a percent of their revenue, essentially.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Yeah, yeah, just like a standard distribution platform. And so there was kind of like three tiers of how that was. So the self-serve distro, which is still there anyone who has a next pro account on SoundCloud can access that. And then middle tier, which is well, was Repost, and that was when it was. They take a little bit of a higher percentage and we could do like marketing same, like recoupable marketing advances, and you get a little bit more involved with the SoundCloud ecosystem they like to call it. And then a higher tier, which is called Roster and that's like licensing deals, so it's artist friendly splits and you get like artist label services.

Speaker 2: 2:40

And then so that was 2017 and worked on that, for I didn't join them, but that was when it started Works that kind of operated for four or five years, mainly in the US. To be fair, it's only been a thing in the UK and Europe since, like last year. So I was brought on as the expansion to UK and Europe and then, when I joined my director now he was pitching roster to the UK and so that's what the team is now that I'm working on. So we've removed the middle tier, so we're not doing distro deals anymore, it's just roster which is licensing deals and then self-serve distro.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Okay. So it's in itself kind of like a label, like you're doing label services in that way.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Yeah, okay. Yeah, we don't. We don't call it a label, but the services that we offer are very similar to like an indie label.

Speaker 3: 3:35

Still classed off as a streaming platform in a sense, where the audiences is there listening to music, or is it more so for the artist these days?

Speaker 2: 3:48

Yeah, more so for the artist, I would say. I think that the kind of streaming side of it is always going to be there, but I think SoundCloud's focus is to well. How I see it anyway, one of the big focuses is to offer more services to artists, and so SoundCloud don't cast themselves as a DSP. They would say that they're more of like a social platform, because it's the only platform that you can listen to music and really kind of like engage with fans. From an artist perspective, you can really engage with fans so you can comment and like and DM and do all these different things that you can't do on Spotify and other streaming platforms. So, yeah, they would say that they're more of a social platform than streaming like a DSP.

Speaker 3: 4:36

Can you take us through an artist's journey of working with SoundCloud, because obviously you go to a regular distributor and then you're on Spotify and iTunes, etc. Well, soundcloud is a little bit different. You upload and then your music's live and then distributed that way, or what happens?

Speaker 2: 4:55

Yeah, so obviously there's a lot of like freedom with releasing on SoundCloud, that a lot of freedom that you don't get if you were to go through a distributor and to go straight to Spotify. You can post demos and SoundCloud exclusives on SoundCloud before they go anywhere else, so it's a very quick turnaround. You can put something up on SoundCloud and it can be live like within half an hour. And then there's like, if you switch on monetization, there's a lot of editorial support you can get on platform as well. And then if you were to use SoundCloud for artists distributor, it's the same as any other distributor. Really Well, to say me, there's pitching tools and stuff that you can do in there.

Speaker 3: 5:35

Do you get a lot of data from the community then? Because if you've got Spotify, for instance, and you upload a track and it's got like 100 streams, you're not really going to get any kind of feedback at all on whether this artist is doing well, does SoundCloud now, because I know that SoundCloud, like you, get comments and you can comment on a particular part of a track, for instance, and you've got that, like you say, that engaged community? Is there a lot going on in the background in terms of helping you, as an A&R, know how people are reacting to the track?

Speaker 2: 6:08

Yeah, yeah, so I mean SoundCloud. There's a lot of data on SoundCloud in terms of like anyone can access that. Artists can access that from their fans and seeing what where it's very specifically. Obviously, Spotify for artists gives you the data in terms of like, what countries, what areas are streaming your music the most. But you can really get down into the nitty-gritty of like who your top 10 fans are and you can contact them directly and reward them. You can send them exclusives like. You can put a 24 hour private link up and send it to your top fan. So that's kind of like a very nice way of like keeping your fans engaged and rewarding them and saying thanks for listening to my music.

Speaker 2: 6:47

So from an A&R perspective, there's like a lot of what I do is in the data of like looking at what songs are growing on the platform and stuff like that. So there is extra data that I can see, but it's nothing more really than an artist can see on their own portal, if you look for it in the right place.

Speaker 1: 7:06

You mentioned monetization. Yeah, how does that work on SoundCloud? Because obviously everyone knows the DSPs pay kind of a very small amount per stream, so you can have it on SoundCloud where you don't monetize, can't you?

Speaker 2: 7:19

I don't actually think that a lot that many people know about SoundCloud monetization.

Speaker 1: 7:24

I don't think I knew yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:25

So it's. If you upload a track just to SoundCloud, you can just put a track upon SoundCloud, but if you have an X-Pro you can monetize that track. And if you monetize a track, then it goes beyond the paywall so it can be included in. It can't be included in any editorial support if it's not monetized. And I don't know if you know anything about fan powered royalties, so fan powered royalties SoundCloud actually won an award for that, so I hope I explained this right.

Speaker 2: 7:58

But if I'm an artist and I upload to SoundCloud and monetize my track, if I have an audience that is going to SoundCloud specifically to listen to my music, then the majority, their subscription fee, will get split amongst the artist that they listen to, rather than it going into a big pool and then divided across all of the artists. I think so. If Drake on Spotify is probably the highest streamed artist, so the majority of subscription fees will go to Drake, whereas on SoundCloud, if you're going to SoundCloud and not listening to Drake, none of your subscription fee will go to Drake. I see, so it's a fair way.

Speaker 1: 8:43

So if you're not being paid per stream directly, it depends on the fans that are coming to you.

Speaker 2: 8:51

Yeah. So we see like a lot of like SoundCloud grown artists that I perform really, really well on SoundCloud that are making a lot more money than other platforms because they're getting a lot of artists like come to SoundCloud and subscribe to SoundCloud purely to listen to their music. So it's a little bit fairer in that you're not paying someone's.

Speaker 1: 9:09

How does an artist get to that point then where they're bringing people to SoundCloud, because, I mean, a lot of people go and push people to just stream the track? In general, is it like you're seeing artists only post on SoundCloud and that's why they're bringing people there, or is it more like certain genres, what is getting people to make their money and bring people to the platform?

Speaker 2: 9:32

There's definitely things like genre plays a part in it. I think if you're making like pop music, it's probably not necessarily going to perform that one on SoundCloud. If you're making like techno, then there's a huge audience on the platform for techno or dance. Electronic drum bass, any kind of electronic dance music tend to perform and hip-hop best on SoundCloud. But we see a lot of at the moment recently like a lot of correlation between TikTok and SoundCloud. So if you're posting something on TikTok and it goes viral, the first place generally that people want to see it as SoundCloud. Obviously again depending on the genres, but we see that like if something goes viral on TikTok, then it generally goes viral on SoundCloud. So I think if artists are posting like snippets of unreleased music on TikTok and then posting like the same snippet on SoundCloud or the full demo on SoundCloud, then that's where the the fans are gonna go to listen to.

Speaker 2: 10:35

I think If you know like it's, it's a little bit trickier to get your music on Spotify. So if you're posting something on tiktok and it's doing really well, it's going viral, then you can't necessarily React the same way on to on Spotify as you can on SoundCloud. Soundcloud gives you the space and the freedom to like be very reactive and to kind of get it up. See that there's if you post like I don't know five snippets of different Songs or whatever on tech, on tiktok, and one does really really well, you can then go straight to SoundCloud and upload it if you've got the full track. Obviously, even if you don't, you can post a 30 second Snip it or whatever on SoundCloud and you can kind of get that very, very instant reaction, which you can't necessarily do.

Speaker 2: 11:19

I see a lot of it. You know artists post something on tiktok and it goes viral and Other platforms or whatever can't get it out quick enough and then obviously you're at risk of losing that viral moment. So if you're kind of doing on SoundCloud, then you can get that instant reaction and then it kind of continues the story. If it goes viral on tiktok or any other social platform, go to SoundCloud, it goes viral. Then then obviously you've got these two very strong platforms that you can use for Pitching to other DSPs and saying, oh look, there's a story here, it's gone viral on tiktok, it's done 100k in a week on SoundCloud or whatever. Pitch to Spotify and they kind of can't really ignore that.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Yeah, I guess it's also a good platform to Experiment as well, because you can get feedback quite easily. So, yeah, post like different versions of the tracks, different demos, yeah, and actually get a straight up response from your audience, unlike Spotify, where everyone's a perfectionist and wants to have. Yeah final master track there.

Speaker 2: 12:15

Yeah, cuz. I think also like yeah, you know, if you post something on Spotify and it does Relatively well, if you're a new artist and it does relatively well, without Sending your artists back to a social, a social platform like Instagram, you don't actually know what they think of it, but you know they can stream it and you can be okay, people in London like this, but like what do they actually think about it? What specifically did they like about it? And you can get that feedback. And you know your fans are like the most important People, right they? If you can get direct feedback from them on what specifically they liked about the song, you can take that feedback into the next music that you make and make changes or, I don't know, follow what they what they like, obviously staying true to who you are as an artist.

Speaker 2: 13:01

But you can get that feedback that you can't. It makes it a lot easier, I think, yeah there's a like, a discovery mode for SoundCloud.

Speaker 3: 13:10

I, how do you, how do artists get discovered by SoundCloud users?

Speaker 2: 13:13

yeah, there's. There is that they've soundcloud recently done a lot of work on their like Algorithm and their discovery mode and stuff, so there is a lot of like. There's an. So SoundCloud acquired an AI company called Museo and that's kind of like rebuild all of the the algorithms on SoundCloud and that really listens to what each listener is is liking and what they're streaming the most and then recommends other stuff that they think they'd like. So, in terms of like a discovery tool, I think I imagine, like you know, soundcloud, soundcloud and TikTok are the two, I would say, best discovery Platforms for new artists.

Speaker 1: 13:53

There's algorithm based playlists, recommended artists, like the same, as you know, spotify would have one thing that, like most Producers that we speak to and hip-hop artists say, is like the collaboration aspect of it, like they can find other artists to collaborate with. Can you like reach out directly to someone through SoundCloud? Yeah, so there's like a message.

Speaker 2: 14:14

Yeah, there's.

Speaker 1: 14:14

DMs yeah, so I guess that's another area of it that most artists probably aren't taking advantage of.

Speaker 2: 14:20

Yeah, and it's. It's only been in the last six months that it's become available to message on iOS, which was pretty big for us, because before I think it was only like desktop that you could message on. Now They've improved the app and and stuff and there's a lot of these changes. That means that you can you can, yeah DM and send like all the Files and whatever through through DMs, which is great, yeah.

Speaker 3: 14:45

I remember back in the day was like cause SoundCloud rappers. Are they still a thing? So what's SoundCloud rapper?

Speaker 1: 14:53

Like the guys that basically just put all of their music on SoundCloud but they don't put it anywhere else.

Speaker 3: 14:58

Yeah, I watched the Louis Thru documentary. Do you watch it on him?

Speaker 1: 15:00

No, have you seen it? No, I haven't seen it.

Speaker 3: 15:03

No, I haven't seen it. Yeah Well, it's on these niche rappers in. Florida and Louis Thru been the most awkward human being alive in the studio and they're all like smoking, weed and drinking.

Speaker 2: 15:17

I know I saw clips of that one too.

Speaker 3: 15:19

Yeah, and and it was really good actually, but they were making so much money and I was like we're making so much money I've never heard of. These are just a torn, they've got like Lamborghinis and stuff and I thought, okay, let's just see what the streams are like. And it was honestly like 80,000 streams for these artists on Spotify, but everything in the documentary was SoundCloud.

Speaker 1: 15:43

So making all their money there?

Speaker 3: 15:45

Yeah, and I think this was this was before SoundCloud monetization, that I think. So, yeah, it's well worth watching, just because it's interesting to see that they build their own audience and Stay where they know on SoundCloud.

Speaker 2: 15:58

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 16:00

Instead of like trying to make it the the usual route, and I always think about that, like the different ways you, an artist, can monetize when you've got your audience and you said it's EDM and Hip-hop, the two like main genres on the back, yeah those are the main genres that you work with directly as well, or is your?

Speaker 2: 16:19

roster pretty. I think the goal is to stay broad, but I think what we're offering is not going to work for every artist. I think the artist that are going to get the most out of what we're offering is those artists, because the biggest tool that we have is we're a platform yeah, and I think we're the only kind of indie label, major label, distributed, whatever that actually has a platform that they can offer as part of the services. Yeah, and so if that's our biggest tool, then it's not going to work for someone who's Not wanting to focus on something.

Speaker 2: 16:51

Yeah, it has to be like. It's a collaboration that we're doing. It's a collaborative thing. So unless the artist cares about SoundCloud, it's not really going to work.

Speaker 1: 16:59

So, as an A&R, are you doing what a major label A&R would do in a way of helping them with the album creation and the artwork and all of that side of things?

Speaker 2: 17:09

Yeah, so we have an in-house marketing team and they do. We offer marketing budgets as part of the deals, and so part of that would be artwork creation and asset creation and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: 17:25

Are there any artists out there on SoundCloud where you say that they are the template of using SoundCloud to its full potential and they have all of their audience on there, even if it's US or UK? Like which artists?

Speaker 2: 17:37

are using it. Well, I think recently, if I think about the tracks that are in the charts, a lot of them have grown on SoundCloud and we would describe as a case study for what we're doing at SoundCloud, and that's Kenya, grace Casso, billy Gillies these are Hannah Lang we actually worked with Hannah. These are all artists that were on SoundCloud first, that we were aware of over the last year, and have been super engaged into SoundCloud and are now kind of charting and stuff, which is great. And so I think I mean Kenya we were talking to Kenya kind of like end of last year and she kind of like smashed what we would want artists to be doing on SoundCloud and that was like through like she was posting TikTok clips and then the demo on SoundCloud and engaging with fans through SoundCloud, and she's just grown this huge audience on SoundCloud.

Speaker 2: 18:39

She's got a hard border. She's got over 100K followers on SoundCloud, which is, you know, we would class probably like six and above as good. So to have 100,000 followers on SoundCloud is insane and I think she's just really, she's really leaned into it. She posts like exclusives on SoundCloud. She does AMAs in SoundCloud comments where she'll answer questions and do all this kind of the DMing stuff. She's just super engaged and I think the more engaged you are with SoundCloud as a platform, the more you'll get out of it.

Speaker 3: 19:11

So you said that it was kind of like TikTok side by side. So TikTok is basically the video side of things, and then she would send the fans to SoundCloud to go listen to it.

Speaker 2: 19:20

Yeah, so she'd be like oh you know, in the caption like oh, full demo upon SoundCloud or whatever. So then people are then obviously going to SoundCloud to listen to the full demo and like sharing, reposting, commenting, and then it will go into our new and hot charts, which is algorithm based. It's based on, like exponential growth and then from there there's a lot of like all the industries watching the SoundCloud new and hot charts and that's where the A&Rs are looking at the new and hot charts to see what's next.

Speaker 3: 19:48

So in that sense, is it like Twitter then, where you follow each other, you follow an account and then they post tracks that they like and you track, post tracks you like, and that's how the momentum gains.

Speaker 2: 20:01

Yeah, so yeah, you can repost on SoundCloud and that contributes as like a piece of data that would go towards like the virality of a track on SoundCloud. The more repost likes comments, it gets.

Speaker 1: 20:17

So would you say that? Because we've spoken a lot about TikTok, which I actually didn't expect in the slightest. So there's to be like much for correlation. But it makes sense because it's easier to push people there than if a track goes viral, then having to like fully go through a distribution plan to get it on Spotify. But would you say, that's the best way to get people to the platform.

Speaker 2: 20:34

I think it's just that like it feels like it's a a starting point. I think, like you said you mentioned about like artists wanting to have something that's like perfect before they're posting it on Spotify. I think you can be a little bit scrappier with SoundCloud and so I think, if you're you know a lot of these young artists, they're just kind of like having fun with it and they didn't necessarily want to like pay for mixing and mastering because it's a new artist and they don't necessarily know if they want to take it serious at the moment. It's just kind of like a bit more fun and a bit free where you can just be like oh, I made this and I'm going to put it on SoundCloud.

Speaker 1: 21:12

I guess you can be so much more consistent as well. You could actually post something like once a day, the chances of it growing from there will be huge, because there's constant content going out.

Speaker 2: 21:22

I think what we see with like DJs and that kind of stuff is that you can't just remix Beyonce and put it up on Spotify without Beyonce permission, whereas on SoundCloud, as long as you're not monetizing it, you can.

Speaker 1: 21:37

Yeah, because you can't even do that on YouTube now. Yeah, if you used to be able to. You should get hit by a copyright claim, wouldn't you?

Speaker 2: 21:42

Yeah, I mean you still can do that on SoundCloud. Yeah, you can still issue a copyright claim and get it taken down, but yeah, it just doesn't happen.

Speaker 1: 21:49

Yeah, yeah, I also see a lot of royalty free music that's being pushed out through YouTube, linking back to SoundCloud where people can download it. Yeah, and I reckon that those people, if they are kind of monetized just a handful of them will make tons of money because their follow account would be huge, because everyone needs royalty free music now for YouTube.

Speaker 2: 22:08

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:09

So there's so many different areas of it that are kind of untouched.

Speaker 3: 22:12

I think it would be a good experiment actually for an artist as well, because you are selling me on this idea of like yeah, good, you're being the billboard of SoundCloud right now.

Speaker 3: 22:21

The idea in general of so you've got Spotify, which is the Discover Weekly algorithm, and then if you upload to that, it's going to push you out. But we know artists have a bad time with that algorithm. Sometimes it's just like it does not pick you up, it does not recognize you. So you can either go one way, which is Spotify, and push your fans to there. I actually hate it when I send a Spotify link personally, it's like you click it.

Speaker 1: 22:50

I know, hale can't say this, especially on desktop, but you click it. How is that she says it. Oh my God, it's worse because it takes me away from Then I will.

Speaker 3: 23:00

I've been listening to a playlist on my phone and then I click the link and it takes me away from the playlist and then suddenly I'm on this artist's profile because I've been sent it to. Maybe you're like, should we work with this artist or not? And I'm like I'll have a quick listen of like 30 seconds.

Speaker 1: 23:14

I've lost my place in the playlist now and I'm like I can't remember what the place is. I would desktop it will take you to it and then be like do you want to open it in the app? And it's like so many different points, whereas SoundCloud is also the go through thing for press. Like, if you want to be sent something, and it's easy for an editor to listen a journalist or whatever radio.

Speaker 2: 23:29

they all want a SoundCloud link, so I mean, I think SoundCloud links are like Easiest thing. The cops here yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:35

They're sharing things. Also, they can like add a description bit. Yeah, so they can be like release date, artist name, distributor label. You have everything in one link rather than having to send a link, then send like a bio and everything with it. But like.

Speaker 2: 23:49

Also, if you want, if you're an artist and you make a track and you just want feedback on it, you can send a private link and you can comment on the link. So if I sent you like and I was like, oh, maddie, what do you think of this? You can write a comment and be like, yeah, this is great, love the drop.

Speaker 1: 24:03

Oh yeah, you can like add little bits to be like change the job, bring the bridge forward.

Speaker 2: 24:07

So if I am, it's like, yeah, that's amazing, it's like to have artists send me music and me directly comment on it. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:14

Going back to what you were saying, I think you're right. In a way of like artists kind of have two roots. Obviously you can combine the both, but you can either take forever to write your track, get it mixed and mastered, spend a lot on it, get it on Spotify and, fingers crossed, it gets on an editorial or gets the algorithm push it out, or you can just continue writing songs and just soundcloud, soundcloud, soundcloud.

Speaker 3: 24:31

Literally get a track out a week and build the audience. Yeah, I was actually gonna say I wish they'd take away the feature on Soundcloud where I don't know if they're still there, but do you know when if you got sent to a really bad track and then they were like have you listened to the track yet? And then they could see the logged in person.

Speaker 1: 24:48

Oh yeah, they could see you'd listened, but actually that's really useful for the artist.

Speaker 2: 24:52

I don't know if that's the thing anymore.

Speaker 1: 24:53

It used to be and I remember we'd get sent inquiries and I'd be logged in, and we don't like go out and decline everyone but if it's not for us or we've got too many clients in the moment. We won't take it on, and I'd get messages on Instagram being like I know you listened to my track. Are we working together? I'm like oh my God.

Speaker 3: 25:11

So I had to log out and be like no.

Speaker 1: 25:12

I need to like, mysteriously, like be very smooth with this and I don't know.

Speaker 2: 25:17

I don't think that's the thing anymore.

Speaker 1: 25:18

Yeah. Obviously, if you send it to one person and there's like one play, then you know they can't do it yeah but I also think what I like about it is you can get very small numbers and no one cares, Whereas on Spotify the streams are shown and everyone hates that less than a thousand streams thing.

Speaker 3: 25:38

Whereas if I get sent a, sound card.

Speaker 1: 25:39

I don't look at the numbers, I'm not like oh, how's this performing? You just listened to it, yeah. Which I think puts less pressure on the artists and also means that as the listener, you're going in without an opinion and you're being less biased with it.

Speaker 2: 25:52

I think you know I would hate it. I used to work in management before as a sound cloud and I would hate it like sending a Spotify profile and it says like less than a thousand. Oh my God, that's so helpful.

Speaker 3: 26:05

It doesn't anymore, does it? It's just blank. What Less than a thousand? Yeah, yeah, I think.

Speaker 1: 26:09

if you click on it, it says like less than a thousand, it will show you, but generally it doesn't say anything, probably because all of the artists were so hurt by it that they like beg for it to bring it down.

Speaker 3: 26:21

But what's the journey of going viral on sound cloud? What does it look like?

Speaker 2: 26:25

I think so. Like I mentioned, we have these algorithm based playlists. There's like new and hot updates every day and then there's like a couple of ones that update weekly and then the top 50 is generally like this like all, algorithm based. So if you're going to go viral on sound cloud, the first place you'd be going is a genre based new and hot chart and then the all genres new and hot charts, like 50 tracks a day that go in there, and that's based on I think I mentioned before exponential growth. So it has to be both new and hot.

Speaker 2: 26:57

So if you're you kind of want to go hard straight away with sending it to people, getting all the kind of data ticks of, like repo shares, comments, likes, and then making sure that you're engaging straight away, replying to those comments, then it will go into the genre and hot chart, hopefully climb. Generally what we see is it climbs for a couple of days and then it's not so new, so it kind of drops out a little bit, but generally that's like doubling streams a day is how that'll grow, and obviously the older it is it needs to be then doing more than that to grow. But once it's in the new and hot charts. It's not necessarily like that playlist is going to give you loads of streams because the amount of people are there's not like a huge amount of people that are looking at those charts, but it's more like for career progression. It's kind of guaranteed that if you're in that new and hot chart, labels will know who you are.

Speaker 3: 28:05

From that point I was about to say Wendy, you guys come in and then start to take notice of that artist in this journey.

Speaker 2: 28:12

Yeah, I think the new and hot chart is when it starts to get very competitive. So we're looking for things that are before the new and hot chart generally, because then everyone's fighting to sign it. Yeah, because then majors are going to swoop in. And if you're in the new and hot chart and it's doing well, it's a good track and you're doing good things on socials, then generally if you're in that new and hot chart, you're going to get contacted by A&Rs from major labels. So for me, I want to be looking at early stages before it gets to that point. So I keep an eye on it, but that's not necessarily what I'm using to find artists. I'm looking at smaller data points than that, like socials, is that one?

Speaker 1: 28:52

of the best you can find.

Speaker 2: 28:54

Yeah, I do look at socials, but the structure of what we're trying to do is find things on platform before it reaches that wider audience.

Speaker 1: 29:05

So you're the ones to break it.

Speaker 2: 29:07

Yeah, hopefully that's the plan. Yeah, so we're trying to get things into new and hot charts just as much as independent artists are. We want it to be in that chart Again, because that's a tool that we can then say to other platforms when we're pitching oh my god, it was number three in the new and hot chart. This is the kind of thing, so it gives another little pitching point.

Speaker 3: 29:33

And there's no editors in SoundCloud. Is there? It's all algorithm, all.

Speaker 2: 29:37

There is editorial playlists.

Speaker 3: 29:40

There is With curators up there.

Speaker 2: 29:41

Yeah, it's the music team. It's not a huge big editorial team. It's just like the big playlists are covered by a few people.

Speaker 1: 29:51

Are they getting the submissions from you guys, but also just what they've discovered or data? It's a combination.

Speaker 2: 30:01

There's an artist relations team and a label relations team, and so labels pitch to SoundCloud for editorial support. So, yeah, they'll have like a. It's only recently in the last like maybe 10 months has come in-house. It used to be external, now it's in-house, so the pitching process has changed a little bit. But yeah, kind of he'll have meetings each week with Sony and Warner and whoever, and now pitch to the playlist team for support. So that's kind of a combination of music that they like on the team. Yeah, our submissions and also label submissions as well Cool, it's quite competitive though, because there's only like 50 slots. Yeah, very yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Whereas with Spotify you've got, like what they used to be 200 editors now it's definitely not.

Speaker 2: 30:50

Yeah, yeah, and it's a small team. They're like three of them, covering all the genres.

Speaker 1: 30:56

When you say all the genres, is it very like SoundCloud genres or is it literally all the genres?

Speaker 2: 31:00

There is well, there is still like pop alternative. I think it's indie. There's a lot of different dance playlists, but, yeah, all genres really.

Speaker 3: 31:14

I do want to try it now with some of it. Yeah, yeah, Because we kind of didn't know about what's being talked about.

Speaker 1: 31:22

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 31:23

So all we've been doing is just using it as a place for sending links and uploading a track and sending it quickly.

Speaker 1: 31:30

I mean, if you look back in the day when we were like more of a traditional PR company, we would use like platforms like Submit Hub, and we still tell ourselves, like give it a go, because there are ones on there where you can get like SoundCloud reposts.

Speaker 2: 31:44

Oh yeah, which is in Like reposts is strange, I think.

Speaker 1: 31:46

Yeah, but I think that kind of thing seems a bit dead now, just because if you're charging someone to repost, you're not going to probably be reposting like good quality stuff. But I definitely think there's like more of a strategy to it that's definitely worth experimenting with.

Speaker 2: 32:00

There's definitely like the SoundCloud strategy which we're seeing a lot of labels are implementing. I think if the music is the right kind of music, then SoundCloud should, like 100% be part of the strategy. Yeah, because there's so many different ways that you can break an artist and not just can be discovered by other places.

Speaker 3: 32:18

I suppose it's also more a slightly place where another artist is going to share your music as well with their fans.

Speaker 1: 32:23

Yeah, and just get discovered by another artist which you can then collaborate with.

Speaker 2: 32:26

We see a lot of like these, like subgenres that just go crazy on SoundCloud, and it's from like them, like usually like a few, I guess. Taste makers are then fine discovering these other artists, and they're all just working together showing their music. We've recently signed someone in like the garage scene and that's kind of like they've just created their own little community on SoundCloud when they all share each other's music. They'll help with each other's music and support, and then eventually a few of them will break through and become like chart artists, which is great for them, yeah.

Speaker 3: 33:09

So any tips for artists on what good things they do on SoundCloud, any bad habits that you see, any things where you're like why do every artist do that thing? Anything that you could say?

Speaker 2: 33:22

I think SoundCloud exclusives are always great, and I think that's great because you get rewarded by SoundCloud. If you do that, soundcloud will love. An exclusive Also opens you up to more editorial support. There's a whole playlist for SoundCloud exclusives, so you get extra support for that.

Speaker 3: 33:39

Sorry, could you go? Soundcloud exclusive is just when you are giving SoundCloud, you're only uploading it to SoundCloud. Is that an official thing or is that just like?

Speaker 2: 33:52

Yeah, so yeah. So we see a lot of like, like oh, who was it? Lil Luzi Vert just did a SoundCloud exclusive, put his EP up for like a week, I think, on SoundCloud exclusively. So, yeah, independent artists as well. Like, if you put a track up for 24 hours or a week or generally as like on the label side of SoundCloud, if we do a SoundCloud exclusive, we'll put it on SoundCloud for like four weeks, exclusively on SoundCloud, send all of the fans to there for four weeks only. And, yeah, if you're obviously not part of SoundCloud roster, then an independent artist, if you put it on SoundCloud for any amount of time, you can then kind of flag that it's SoundCloud exclusive and it'll get extra support on like that kind of part of the upload process is.

Speaker 3: 34:37

It is like flag doesn't exclusive.

Speaker 2: 34:39

No, you can't. You'd have to manually flag it to someone at SoundCloud.

Speaker 3: 34:42

I see, I see, but you can just like DM someone at SoundCloud and if they like it, then Got it yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:47

And yeah, but there's like a whole slider for SoundCloud exclusives. So if the music team like it and it's exclusive, then they'll put it on the slider, which is extra visibility on the homepage. Any bad?

Speaker 1: 34:59

habits is what you see. Bad habits, let me hear about that. Does the artwork make a difference? Does like responding to comments, help with the algorithm? Anything like that?

Speaker 2: 35:07

Yeah, all of that, okay, all of that. I think SoundCloud is like you can. There's quite a lot you can do in terms of like branding on SoundCloud. It's like the wave behind the waveforms. You can add imagery. Oh, actually, I've just thought of something that I really really hate about artists on SoundCloud Absolutely Is when in the bio, there's places that you can add your links to socials and a lot of artists will just copy and paste their link into the bio rather than utilizing that function. So where it will come up like Instagram, tiktok, spotify, rather than just inserting your like Instagram slash, blah, blah, blah, you can just click on and I just think that's just so much better.

Speaker 1: 35:50

Yes, it's easy for them to click through.

Speaker 2: 35:52

Yeah, yeah, but utilizing all the features that SoundCloud has to offer, like monetization, the bio, the social links, making sure that it's like very much branded to you as an artist, so like banner profile picture and also like on the banner if you're doing it, so like if you have a new song out, you put like a new song out out now or whatever, on the banner image, rather than it just being like a different version of your profile image To personalize it through the time?

Speaker 2: 36:20

Yeah, so make it very like personalized, keep it fresh, update it regularly. Also, there's a feature called Spotlight, which is like if your track comes to the top of your page, which I think is great, if you have a new release, so you can pin it to the top.

Speaker 1: 36:34

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2: 36:36

Yeah, yeah, like a pin, and yeah, just replying to as many comments as possible, it's a good place to end it.

Speaker 1: 36:42

Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. It was lovely to meet you. Can they find you on socials or anything? Where's the best place for people to find you? Hope hair on everything. Hope hair on Instagram and LinkedIn and all of that. Yep, great, well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3: 36:56

I'd also be interested in the comments of any artists are using SoundCloud in a good way.

Speaker 1: 36:58

Tell me a SoundCloud story. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:00

I'd be really interested because I think this podcast show and how little I know about SoundCloud apart from Louis Theroux, so I'd be interested to hear how you're using it.

Speaker 1: 37:09

Cool. If you enjoyed, make sure to give it a like and subscribe if you're watching on YouTube, and we'll see you in the next one.