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Getting our music to the ears of potential buyers is by far the most important thing for us. We can rely on people hitting the various library sites by chance, or try to drive them there through social networking.
We all know how important social networking has become for commerce in general, no matter what product you may be selling. And it should be no different for us, as we are selling a product. Our tracks
The first major music networking site was MySpace, which has now kind of gone the way of flip-phones…..and is not as engaging as it used to be.
When I started selling my tracks on library sites a little over 2 1/2 years ago, I wanted to find a way to get people aware of them. At that time I had only 30 tracks, and put them on my simple website. Well, most of the time it took forever for them to load up, and as my catalog grew it kind of outgrew my website.
I then discovered Soundcloud. They were just getting started around that time. I started to post my tracks there, with links in my profile to the various sites I was selling on.
One of the great things about Soudcloud is you can post your tracks in either .wav or MP3 format in full length with no audio watermarks, so people can hear the track just as it is. I now have over 300 tracks posted there , and since going on have had over 12,500 plays! Even though people cannot download or purchase on the site, I have to believe that some of those plays resulted in sales on library sites.
Soundcloud has 3 or 4 various plans to choose from. I chose the Pro plan for $39.00 per month. With that I can post up to 36 hours of music.
Like Facebook, you can follow people, and invite them to follow you. They can also leave comments about your music. Now in reality most of the people posting music there are doing mash-ups, re-mixes etc., so having a full-length original track on there stands out.
Twitter has also helped get traffic to my website and to Soundcloud. I was posting any new tracks on my Facebook page, but that was just going out to friends, who really paid no attention.
With Twitter, I am reaching out to more potential buyers and a larger cross-section of people. Anytime I post a new track on Twitter it links up to my Soundcloud page, and I always see a huge spike in visits to there and to my website, so people are listening, and hopefully buying..
Now I know the subject of piracy will come into play here, but the site seems to be very secure, and really it is something we’ve had to deal with since the beginning of recorded music….We can just hope it doesn’t happen
Social networking can be a powerful tool in gaining awareness of your product no matter what it is. These days anything you can do to get a leg up on the competition is worth looking into. Would like to know what other of you are using
Thanks
Gary
Social networking does not seem very useful for me. It is easier for me to just contact the libraries themselves. I have a simple Soundcloud page to send links to songs that I have to companies.
Much of the newer social media sites are just a waste of time. Sure, people come together and talk, but no real business is being handled. There are just too many pontificators, speculators, and haters out there to make solid connections.
Most people I have encountered have been either nice & unfocused or successful & arrogant. People are always trying to sell stuff too. So many people are collecting email addresses to sell you books or “music services”. It is better for me to focus on the music and then push it out straight to music libraries.
I use Soundcloud basically as a tool for some of the libraries I work with can download songs I’m submitting them (usually custom cues).
I don’t think many libraries or their end users really have the time to surf thru all these various social networks to find music for their projects. Not that it can’t happen, but I think it’s very rare.
Just found this excelelnt topic, so apologies for the late reply.
Like GarW I had a Pro souncloud account, however I found that people would only listen to the first 5-8 on the main page anyway, so I reverted to standard.
Getting people there through social to listen to a particular track however is a different thing and it does work.
I’ve been pplaying with a Twitter account for a while but I’d like to hear from GaryW on how he got people to follow him on twitter, us not being reality show stars and all that 🙂
thanks Gary it was indeed very helpfull
all the best
This brings up an interesting subject – the growing audience for instrumental production music.
Over the past 6-7 years I’ve written a lot of library music, some of it ‘epic’ trailer music.Recently, people have been finding my demos on various library sites and uploading them to YouTube. Epic music has a big following and some of the videos featuring my trailer music have over a million views.
At first I thought it was a bad thing – it felt like my music was being stolen. But then I started to realize that a composer could use this publicity to their advantage, and last September I ended up releasing an album of instrumental music (that I had the rights to) on CDBaby and iTunes. The album’s done pretty well, becoming an income stream that matches most of my library deals.
I love SoundCloud, when I finally get around to updating my personal demo website, I’ll use it as the main demo player (no flash!)Interesting Mark, it’s a new world, still a bit difficult to define. Certainly ‘share’ it’s a key word now, how to translate that in sales it’s the challenge we’ll have to face.
Gary reminded me that I did too had a few sales over soundcloud, that later became clients, a clear advantage over RF libriaries. My tracks where not up for download but the perspective client found a way to get them and try them with their cues. It worked, they got in touch and paid a licence.
Now as you say youtube it’s also a key social channel where to be, ideally one should upload over there as much as possible and tag like hell..as it’s definetely the place people – professional too – use as a music library for referencing (my production meetings are full of ‘have you checked this on youtube’ moments).
In the long run this might just make RF libraries much less relevant, to our benefit.
This is really interesting as I see SC as the wild west of indie music at the moment..you NEVER know what will happen there.I have uploaded songs I thought were amazing and had tons of potential only to get a few listens and then upload bare bones acoustic songs that get 500 plus listens in the first week…with no promotion? – no rhyme or reason to it – I leave my stuff open for download as I mainly write songs and want them to get around BUT I personally feel that if a music supervisor or filmmaker wants to temp a track you should give them free access..if someone’s crazy enough to use it without permission they’re probably not professional enough to get anywhere with their work but if they do you’ll more than likely get paid eventually…I go with the free account and revolve songs occasionally but wish the free account gave you a bit more time – i’ve been lazy about tagging..thanks for the tip and will spend some time doing that today..
what exactly does this mean…”Now as you say youtube it’s also a key social channel where to be, ideally one should upload over there as much as possible and tag like hell.”
I thought youtube was for videos only? – are you making videos (which i’ve done) and uploading or just offering up music somehow?
Jay..
I have been ~1,5yrs with SC (with ~100 tracks) on Pro account.
Removed my stuff after their “redesign” (brand new look:)) (in autmn 2012).
Maybe it worth to visit them again – to see if they rolled back.
Btw, does anybody knows similar sites to SC?
You can switch back to the old style by clicking on “More” at the top right, and then “Switch back to Classic SoundCloud”. Visitors, however, will see the new version.
I don’t know a lot about it, but ReverbNation is another site where you can post tracks.
Really great information here! So far I used facebook ads. It’s a nice tool and usually they give you a 30$ voucher to give it a try. It generated me around 100 new followers per week. I also send my music to blogs and online radio stations, they can also create buzz for you.
Hi All,
Has anyone tried headliner.fm?
It’s a social media post exchange. You post someone else’s stuff and someone else posts your stuff.
It works for me.
Just wanted to share this.
All the best,
Krisztian
I tried headliner.fm and ended having an email fight with someone there after I cancelled my account (you have to actually ask them to do it and say why).This was a while back now, and if I recall, I checked out the facebook profile of the top “artist” they had featured on the site. Turns out that even though he had amassed 1000’s of followers, all he ever posted was just spam links. There was no interaction whatsoever. But in return for that he received credits. Seemed very dodgy.
It just seems the site was yet another example of a company making money off desperate musicians.
Hi Grant
Headliner.fm was a bit of a learning experience for me too. After my first successful campaign they never reposted my second so I gave up on them. Today they sent me an email that they are ‘rebranding’ themselves. I think they realised that there was too much spam amongst the posts.
Another social media experiment for me is behance.net. I have actually met online film makers and creative people who I ended up collaborating with. I now have more than 600 followers there and I had several requests for music composition from some of them. This one is worth doing I think.
Best,
Krisztian
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