How do you get plays?

The Lokkz

The Lokkz

The Lokkz Music
Hey guys what's up? Let me give a little background about what i'm doing before I ask the question.
I have been producing, mixing, mastering, recording, rapping, singing, playing instruments all for about 10 years now. I just started an online beat selling business last November. I've watched countless tutorials and videos about how to run a successful online business and beat selling business. I have a website, all social media accounts, most music platform accounts, and I post daily updates of making beats and other posts as well as posts about different beats I have in my catalog. I post 1 new beat per week on average, sometimes its more, sometimes I don't post anything new for that week. Mostly I stick to promoting the beats I already have. So after almost a whole year of doing this, when I post a beat I expect to get a good bit of plays but that is not the case. The most plays I have on any of my beats is around 400. I posted a beat last night even with promoting I only have like 25 plays.

So my question is, what do you guys do when you first upload a new beat and then the time in-between where you aren't posting anything new? Do you just post a lot of statuses or do you just message a bunch of people asking them to listen to the new beat? And in-between dropping new beats, do you strictly keep promoting the new beast or do you promote a bunch of different beats that you've released? I see some of these producers who get 200 to 500 plays within a few hours of posting and i'm sure they no longer have to do much promotion since they have 10k followers and subscribers on multiple platforms. I would expect atleast 50 plays the first day of uploading since i've gained a lot of followers on twitter and I've talked to over 1000 people and they've checked out my stuff. I only have around 30 subscribers on youtube and under 500 followers on soundcloud, But I would think I could atleast get a lot of plays from my twitter followers and Facebook fans which is 4,000 followers on twitter and 600 likes on Facebook. So for you guys who have a lot of subscribers and followers who will check out your stuff when you upload, what did you do initially before you gained all of that? How did you reach out to people and get plays?
 
nearly 500 followers? Damn man I feel like you should be getting some more plays with that sort of number of followers. I don't gave many plays on soundcloud or many followers but maybe its an issue of quality control and people just aren't getting excited about your beats at this stage. Thing is that the people who listen to beats are not the average music listener but people interested in rapping over something or people who make beats themselves. Your average hip hop fan probably wont be scouring soundcloud looking for beats.
 
Someone once gave the advice on this field, which I'm not sure is 100% true but definitely worth thinking about.

You only need one thing, which is a repost by a big promo channel, whichever one all the music you listen to is on. Mr Suicidesheep, or UKF dubstep or trap nation or whatever.
The only reason most people don't get this is because, actually their music isn't good enough. It's easy to kid yourself that you have amazing music, but in reality, does it actually stand out in terms of quality?

Once you get that repost, you get thousands of followers instantly.

Another thing is that, at least when you start, a lot of your followers will be other musicians like you, who just want their own following and therefore are more liberal with the shares and likes than the average Joe. Make sure you're promoting to other people who aren't musicians, because that's the real test of whether your music is good or not.
 
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Judging from a numbers perspective as the industry is a numbers game strictly which is sad but it's a business, I'd say that your numbers are impressive and here's hoping from me that your product is equally impressive. Put the art form over business and have balance with both. I can't tell you how to get plays but I can tell you maybe post studio type vids via artists you follow on IG that are working with you or want to.
 
Also, connecting with your fans personally and talking to them with more substance and maybe a better beat description, rather than "check out my new banger" will make them more inclined to check out your stuff to begin with,

and after that they will be more inclined to check out any future tracks too.
 
I just got a tune to hit 408 plays in the first day of release. Idk how..

I would focus on having a quality songs, and building your reputation amongst the music industry. Connect with other artists. The plays should come honestly without cheating, because the anybody with an ear in industry knows what's good and what's bad. If you cheat on the surface level to "look" the part, it still wont sound the part.

You just have to create really good music.
 
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