Being a musician in today’s age comes with its own set of perks. To make your place in the grand scheme of the music industry it has become quite important to position and promote your work well, of course through the right combination of channels. Social media is one of the best platforms, to begin with promoting your music, and the first ones that come to mind are SoundCloud and YouTube Music. Now the billion-dollar question is which one’s the best for your music.
To answer this, you need to be able to define the kind of music you are looking to promote and making your USP. You need to consider factors like, do you want your music to have a video to it, what is the kind of audience you want to reach, what do you want your brand to be known for in the future. Once you have identified these key factors, it will become a piece of cake to decipher which platform is best suited for your music promotion.
Now let’s look at how SoundCloud and YouTube can serve you in your music promotion journey.
SoundCloud
SoundCloud comes with a wide array of benefits for the music industry, given the whole platform is bound together by its vast community of musicians. A lot of artists are active on SoundCloud which makes it easier for any musician to tap into the pool of like-minded audience. It is quite evident that SoundCloud is by the musicians, for the musicians, which makes the platform a lot more wholesome in comparison to other social networking websites.
One of the key factors that must be considered before going forward with SoundCloud is whether you want your music to have a video to it or you just want to promote your track. Since SoundCloud does not offer video streaming, it might not be a viable option if you want to promote a music video.
If you are only looking to promote your track, then SoundCloud can provide you with ample mileage to your promotional plans. One can easily define, grow, and engage its follower base on SoundCloud organically as it has a vast community of like-minded artists and musicians. Just like any other social networking platform, SoundCloud gives the ability of direct messaging, reposting, and sharing.
If you are looking to have your promotion pick up quickly, you also have the option of buying SoundCloud plays. You can buy SoundCloud plays to increase your reach and followers on the platform. There are numerous companies and websites to buy SoundCloud plays that provide a money-back guarantee and quality followers. If you have a budget, you should definitely consider buying SoundCloud plays and make it a consistent part of your promotion strategy.
Another advantage of promoting your music on SoundCloud is having the ability to connect, network, and engage with other musicians and artists across the world. If luck is with you, you may end up striking a good deal with a record company!
YouTube
YouTube being one of the biggest leaders of the video-sharing platform, comes with a plethora of pros to it. Even though it is not a dedicated platform for music, artists and musicians from all over the world have hit the success road by promoting their music on YouTube. A very large chunk of YouTube’s audience uses the platform for music streaming, which makes it a perfect fit for artists who are looking to promote their music to a wider range of audiences.
YouTube offers the largest audience amongst all platforms that go beyond the music-specific kinds, this may help in tapping into a bigger reach than you expected. Since YouTube is a video-sharing and streaming platform, content with a decent video to it makes it bigger as compared to simple slideshow tracks. If you have the budget and means for it, an interesting video will manage to take your music further than the track could itself.
Just like other networking platforms, YouTube too has direct messaging, capabilities that may help you connect, network, and engage with your audience and other artists.
If we talk about reach, with YouTube you can build your brand big by putting efforts into search engine optimization as Google shows YouTube’s search results first whenever a track or a video is searched for. Using this to your advantage may help you get your video or track further up on the search results.
If we talk about cons, one of them is that, even though the community on SoundCloud is much warm and positive, YouTube may sometimes put you in places where negative comments are hurled at you. If this bothers you in any way, you may want to reconsider your promotion strategy.
Every artist’s work is different, which means you can any day tailor a promotion strategy for your music basis your capabilities and needs. If you want your brand to be a video-heavy name, then YouTube is a better bet for you, however, if your goal is to promote your track on SoundCloud, then they may serve you far better. Neither of these platforms is better than each other, only that both can work wonders for different purposes depending on the artist’s requirements.
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