5 Extremely Powerful Ways for Bands to Use SoundCloud
You play in a band, have heard about SoundCloud but are not yet sure how it can help you? No problem – let’s take a closer look and dive into the different things you can do. We hope you’ll join and make SoundCloud your hub on the web, the control room for your tracks.
In short:
Upload your songs to your SoundCloud account, easily bring your tracks to where your fans are and have all the statistics around plays and downloads in one place.
In detail:
1. Player Widgets – Your tracks, well in shape.
We’re sure you put a lot of thought and energy into creating beautiful artwork for your songs and albums and obviously they deserve the best players available out there. Good thing we’ve got ’em. We want to help you get the most out of your artwork when embedding your tracks to your blog, website or social profiles.
In addition to our classic waveform player, our Premium accounts come with two extra widget players: the artwork and minimal player. For artists and bands working with albums, we recommend using the artwork player. Here’s an example of a nice artwork player integration to a band website:
On the left, when you mouse-over the player, you see a preview of the player navigation: different options on the top and the album navigation including the waveform at the bottom of the player. Pretty cool: your album art and a big play button. Perfect for your discography page on your website.
2. BandPage by RootMusic – Your fully customized band page on Facebook
RootMusic’s BandPage app for Facebook has quickly become one of the most popular apps used by the SoundCloud community. Now there’s finally a way for bands to have all their info on one Facebook page: tracks powered by SoundCloud, tour dates, photos, your bands’ biography and wall posts. For fans, browsing your BandPage is a breeze as they can continue to listen to the streamed tracks while clicking through the page.
The fine folks over at RootMusic have created a series of helpful videos explaining in detail about how to get started. One promise: it’s extremely easy and intuitive to create your BandPage. Check out these two examples from Snoop Dogg and Tom Petty (click to enlarge).
3. Extensions – Push to where your fans are
Back in 1986, Salt-N-Peppa taught us to ‘push it, push it real good’. We took them at their word and added a nifty way for you to automatically push newly uploaded tracks and sets to your other social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. This saves you a lot of time when updating your different profiles and sends your new material straight into your fans’ timelines where they can discuss your latest creations. Plus, you can customize the text of the messages pushed to catch your fans’ attention:
Fans, on the other hand, can also use the same extensions to push the players of tracks they favorite on SoundCloud straight to their social network profiles (Facebook pictured on the left), thus helping you to promote your songs to their friends. Win-win, as they say in the biz.
Click here to read the step-by-step guide about how to set up your extensions or access them directly in your settings.
4. Mobile Roadie – Create your own iPhone or Android app
Mobile apps are hot, there’s no doubt about that.
Our partners at Mobile Roadie have built a framework and an easy-to-update content management system enabling you to create your own personalized iPhone and Android app in no time. Developing an individual app from scratch takes a lot of time, money and expertise. With Mobile Roadie, you sign up, get access to the platform, import your SoundCloud tracks, customize the app here and there and Mobile Roadie will submit your app to the app store in no time.
To learn about the full list of supported features, click here.
Artists and bands already using Mobile Roadie: Madonna, As I Lay Dying, The Doors, Black Lips and many many more.
5. Flavors.me – Speaking of websites. Need one?
Flavors.me allows you to create an elegant & dynamic website and aggregate your different profiles from around the web. Link up your Facebook page, Twitter, Flickr or SoundCloud accounts – you name it. You’ll have everything in one place on a page you can fully customize: background picture, fonts, size. Track the traffic statistics and learn about your visitors and to top that: if you already have an own domain, you can use it or buy a custom domain right when signing up with a Flavors account. Read more about the latest Flavors.me developments in a recent blog post about their current release.
Example? Here you go:
More features and tips that can help your band:
Buy Links: via your track/set settings, add a link to any offline/online store to point people to where you’re selling your tracks
Hack the player: there are many different ways to ‘hack’ the player, read what can be done here
Remix competitions: learn about how you can use the Groups feature to organize remix competitions
Promo & Digital PR: service your tracks to bloggers and journalists via the private sharing feature (works great for to collaborate between you and other members of your band)
Custom Player: with a little help from savvy developer friends, build your custom players like Band Of Horses or The Golden Filter.
As always, feedback & suggestions welcome in the comments below and thanks for the help sharing this blog post with friends playing in bands. Muchos appreciatos.