How To (Finally) Monetize Your SoundCloud Streams
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Written by Omari
At long last, the popular music platform, SoundCloud, has started to branch out their monetizing efforts.
They recently caught a ton of flack from major labels because they weren't generating any substantial amount of revenue for their artists.
Some may say that the labels are being "greedy", but if we look at the facts, it cost a good bit of money to put together an album (not to mention market it as well). It's understandable that labels would want a return on investment.
These days, music can be found for free almost anywhere. Services like Spotify and Pandora allow listeners to enjoy as much music as they want for free as long they don't mind listening to advertisements every 4 or 5 songs.
SoundCloud has just as large a fan base as Spotify, but their profit sharing model hasn't been friendly to musicians until their inception of the OnSoundCloud program. The new feature allowed for a certain number of popular profiles to enable advertisements through their channel and share in revenue with SoundCloud.
The Problem With The OnSoundCloud Program
The big problem with the OnSoundCloud program was that it was invitation only. Even if you were getting a good amount of traffic to your SoundCloud page, it didn't matter if you weren't invited to share in the profits.
I've always advocated musicians to learn smart marketing techniques in order to be able to sell their music to fans, but it certainly doesn't hurt to earn money from streaming even when fans aren't willing to purchase the music.
The Fix Musicians Have Been Waiting For
Musicians are now able to monetize their streams through beatstars.com. Don't let the name fool you. They just recently did a HUGE site update that is artist friendly as well.
If you've ever been to my homepage, you've probably noticed the widget (provided by Beatstars). They allow you to set up your own music store that is FAR more sophisticated than the widgets from ReverbNation or SoundCloud.
I may write another piece on all the features provided through the widget, but for today I'll focus on the SoundCloud monetization.
How To Get Started Today (It's Free)
Head to this link if you don't have a Beatstars account yet: https://www.beatstars.com/sell-music
You can sign up for a free account to get started. The premium accounts allow you to keep all of your profits from selling music. It makes sense to get if you're experienced in marketing, but if you're new to making music, a free account will do just fine for now.
After you sign up head to your account>social connect to sync your SoundCloud profile.
Next, go to music distribution>SoundCloud to start submitting your tracks for the service.
They'll review the songs and distribute them within a few days or so.
That's it! I'm not sure how much per stream you get with the service as they just implemented it about a week ago, but this makes sense for anyone to do now that it's an option.
Promotion & Monetization
Now that you can monetize streams it makes it easier to get a return on investment from music promotion as well!
The more real listeners you have, the more money you make. If you're not getting many listeners (under 1,000 per song on average), it's probably time you started to get promotion. There's too much opportunity out there to not be heard or to try and do everything for free.
Click the button below to take advantage of real music promotion and get heard!
When your song is ready to go, it's time to start promoting it to potential fans! Omari has the best organic promotion services money can buy. With packages for Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, we will get your music the traffic and attention it deserves! Click below for more information.
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© 2023 Omari MC, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
© 2023 Omari MC, LLC. All Rights Reserved.