SoundCloud Ads Are Making (Sound)Waves

SoundCloud Advertising
Image courtesy of soundcloud.com

SoundCloud is a social media platform that specializes in the distribution of music. Musicians around the world can create a profile and upload their music, which others can listen to, comment on, and even download if the musician permits it. Musicians love SoundCloud because it allows them to get their music out to the general public without needing to go through a big distributor. After all, if people don’t know your music, you can’t expect to make any money. SoundCloud is also unique because the social media platform is a popular hub for musicians to interact with one another.

The six year old website and application is now going to be adding advertisements. Don’t worry if you are an avid SoundCloud listener. The head of sales, Dan Gerber, has already assured audiences that the company will make sure not to overwhelm audiences with advertisements. The push to advertisements on SoundCloud will be slow, to ensure that users do not experience a dramatic change.

How will the advertisements work?
There are multiple ways that SoundCloud will be integrating marketing. Let’s look at the most basic way. Similar to Pandora, SoundCloud music will occasionally release 30 second advertisements before a song. However, users will be able to click out of it after 15 seconds. This may be an annoyance to some who are used to SoundCloud’s previously ad free listening. However, this does mean that SoundCloud will see higher revenues with the added advertising, which means potential upgrades to the SoundCloud website and application. SoundCloud’s first advertisers will be Redbull and Jaguar.

SoundCloud Stream
Image courtesy of techhive.com

SoundCloud will also be allowing sponsored tracks. According to Adweek.com, the SoundCloud sponsored tracks will work similar to Twitter’s promoted tweets. These ads will be regular music tracks, just promoted at the top of the page. These promoted pages should allow willing users the opportunity to feature their music. SoundCloud will also allow for band pages to be promoted through this method.

The mobile version will include interstitial ads on their page instead of the traditional banner ads. The plan is to make sure ads don’t appear until users start swiping on the page or switch to a different song. However, these ads will not appear every time a user visits the site. The reason for this type of advertising instead of traditional banner ads is to ensure that users do not accidentally click on the ad, which would become frustrating and drive traffic away from the site.

Mashable.com mentions that SoundCloud will be able to host contests where brands can offer exposure to newer artists. These contests will help brands link up with artists and bands.

There may be some resistance from SoundCloud users at first, but when musicians see the new opportunities opening up, they are likely to change their minds. This new addition to SoundCloud is sure to add much needed revenue to the social media company, which will now have more opportunities to upgrade the page and the application, which in turn will make artists and their wallets happy.

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