SoundCloud is an audio platform aimed towards audio creators helping to share their creations across the web. SoundCloud Tips is a series of informative posts with Symphonic Distribution for some quick tips of how you can make of SoundCloud as a label and for your artists. The third in this series is about how you can use SoundCloud to create awareness about an upcoming release, from press embedding your SoundCloud player, to creating content with fans, or the most effective way to give away a free track and premiere your album.

Press
If you are sending tracks out to press, rather than having parties host a track for fans to listen to why not let listeners stream the track immediately by offering an embed of the track, giving you further control of the tracks movement across the web. If you are sending to Hype Machine registered blogs we have a great Hype Machine integration too! Found a site which suits your artists audience? Why not offer an embed of an exclusive track with our secret widget. Find otu more about how you can send a track to press.

Premieres
Looking for a way to premiere your next release, setting up an exclusive with a media partner and the secret widget is one option but how about bringing the experience to your own site. Fans are looking for a very simple, aesthetically pleasing, premiere player that they can listen to from anywhere. Bands need a structure that maximizes both the viral reach and sale of the record. We think we’ve created a nice mix of both. It’s called Premiere, check out Beastie Boys using the app.

Social For Download
Giving away a free track is a useful tool to build awareness around a release and give something up front to fans. We have created a couple of platforms to allow you to turn this mechanic into a simple process with the audio at the forefront. One of our newest additions allows you to set this up in a couple of minutes for a fan to receive a download in return for a tweet, called Social Unlock. Just connect your SoundCloud account, pick your tracks and your ready to go!

The second option if you want to add further variants is our Social for Download app. The app automaically rolls together interactions from four of the biggest social networks (tweet on Twitter, share on Facebook, update on MySpace, & Digg… on Digg) and throws in Email capture for good measure to make the ultimate “social for download” campaign.

Contests
Remix competitions, Production contests, Songwriting or a Battle of the Bands, whatever it may be SoundCloud has the mechanics you need to get your next contest off the ground. We offer a variety of different options to running a contest, each with their own different benefits to suit your needs.

You can set up a group, embed your stems onto a landing page and include a dropbox widget linked to the group for submissions like this example from Two Door Cinema Club, or you could take it one step further and utilise our Remix App, which allows you to fully customize the whole experience and add all sorts of engaging social features like voting and sharing, check out this great example from Soulstice. Not only do we have a super effective platform for contests, we also have a huge community of audio creators who are looking to collaborate so why not engage with our users and create some awesome content. Find out more information on how you can set up a contest.

To keep up to date with SoundCloud follow us on Tumblr or check out the SoundCloud Blog.