Building a following

[antman]

Ive come quite comfortable with my production is at right now. I decided id start actually pushing my music a bit. But ive gotten NO WHERE.

Ive even had a track featured by the dubstepdealer on his youtube channel and gained a few followers from that but for some reason no matter how hard I push my stuff I can't break 200 followers on soundcloud.

How do you guys push your music? What do you use to get people to hear your stuff.

Of course, maybe im just not very good, but there has to be a certain point where you start pushing your music so that people can atleast hear it. No im not after money or anything like that. It would just be nice to know that there are people out there who are enjoying my music.

Even if you are the best producer in the world, you still need to be able to push it into peoples ears. How do you do this?

[mthrfnk]

There's a thread about similar stuff already....

Release songs and remixes for free.
Send to promotional blogs and YouTube channels, ensuring they link back to your social sphere (make sure SoundCloud/Twitter/Facebook etc. all look remotely professional words/style wise). Also many DJ's and producers openly accept tracks via SoundCloud or email.
Build a fan base from there.

Having a fan base to start off with is worth more than anything to a label since you've already done a lot of work for them by creating yourself a market. This is what I'm slowly trying to do atm.

There's no harm in sending tracks to labels early on, I've done it and had some decent feedback from it, but like someone else mentioned small labels can be a waste of time and effort, I'd rather control the release of a track myself and promote it through social networks than have some small label attempt to distribute it half-heartedly. I'm not saying all small labels are bad - there's loads of great ones, but from personal experience I've had a couple of people contact me who run "labels" which were in fact a one man setup, with a piss poor fan base, using an online distributor to get onto places like iTunes or Beatport...

People obsessing over managers at the start of a "career" in production have the wrong aim in sight, if you're unable to manage yourself at that stage in terms of organisation and promotion you're not dedicated enough (imo).

Biggest flaw is when you have little to no followers on anything..
Work on getting a fanbase.. its not easy and I'm still learning how to do it

This x100

I've posted this so many times, if you have a fan base (even like 1000+ followers) it looks better and labels are more comfortable as they effectively have to do less work marketing you.

SoundCloud/YouTube/Twitter/Facebook - set them all up, interlink them, make them look professional (name/age/location/type of music you make/artwork/sample tracks) and interact with artists you like or labels you're interested in.

Also hit up blogs/youtube/soundcloud promo channels - they can be invaluable (for example some will help you to get 10k+ legit plays in a few days... even if only 10% of those people go on to check out the rest of your work that's still another 1000 people)

It's funny that this thread got bumped with this. I am planning to do exactly what Mthrfnk said next.

I've been doing this slowly for the past few months... my main problem is not actually having any finished tracks to back myself up with (fucking retarded I know but I've been making demo after demo without finishing much).

I managed to get some really small promo on two YouTube channels a while back with one of my tracks, I contacted one and surprisingly the other one contacted me... I've only had about 2k plays total off that which sound shit (kinda is) but it's a positive for me in terms of the comments and likes I got. I've also been contacted by a few small labels who were interested in my stuff they found on SoundCloud but I turned them down, imo unless the label is fairly well established themselves you're better off self-releasing/promoting yourself these days since it really is quite easy - you can even get your tracks on iTunes/Spotify yourself plus there's always Bandcamp.

Until recently I'd been getting about 100-150 plays a day on SoundCloud and steadily getting 1-5 followers a day (again not massive but this was with no new finished/free tracks and no promo aside from maybe here and my Twitter) but a few days ago I tidied up my SoundCloud - literally removed 3.5 hours of demos/wip's/sound design from the last 2 years and I made some new logos and got my pages looking okay... I'm planning a new release atm which hopefully should be able to pull me some promo from a variety of places. I'm not looking to get 1000's of plays and get signed asap but I think planning things properly and having some form of professional aspiration is a good thing, especially going forward.

Just realised this is kind of a pointless post since nobody really gives a fuck but maybe someone will benefit

Oh btw I forgot mixcloud in my previous post, posting casual mixes with your music in always helps I think.

[__________]

ive gotten NO WHERE.

What do you consider somewhere? If you had 250 followers would you be happy then? 500? A thousand?

Followers don't equal gigs, decent releases or respect in any way. You can literally buy followers on any social media platform.

If you just want to increase your follower number:
* talk a lot to people online and be overly polite and humble to everyone
* update your social media frequently (in low to high order:) soundcloud/facebook/twitter
* spam your name around
* spam tunes to different soundcloud groups
* if you've got any spare cash then spend it on facebook advertising or buying followers

Art (e.g music) and online marketing/branding/PR/etc ('building a following') are completely different things with a complex relationship. I'd say the only real and honest way to increase your online 'following' without trying to play or exploit the social media game is to make more music, get more gigs, meet more people, go to more gigs, get a job in the industry, hand out more CD's, get a residency, go on radio, etc etc

OR just see what makes other people popular and copy it exactly